Sick of rain? You're not alone. 

Most places in SoCal received between 1 and 3 inches of rain since Saturday. We've now had seven straight days of rain in the forecast, and this storm is finally moving out of town.

Where is the rainiest spot in our region?  It's a little place in the San Gabriel Mountains called Opids Camp.  Since Saturday afternoon, more than 8 inches of rain fell there.  Where in the world is Opids Camp and why does it rain so much there?

Here's a little excerpt about the place (from www.wrightwoodforum.com):

Opids Camp, otherwise known as camp Hi Hill (Long Beach School District) is a rustic school camp perched 3.600 feet above Pasadena, high in the San Gabriel Mountains right here in the Angeles National Forest.  It is the wettest place on record in Los Angeles County.  The water has so saturated the ground that the landscape appears to be in constant motion.  It gets enough rainfall to rival any location in the entire State of California.  Even on fairly nice days in the Los Angeles Basin, OPIDS Camp can get a few hundredths of an inch or so.  Why is that?

Location, location, location!

The camp is a prime site for heavy rain because of its location high on the face of a mountain five miles north of Mt. Wilson. When warm-water storm systems from the Pacific make it above Mt. Wilson's peak, they react to the cold air and condense, producing extraordinarily heavy rain.  It is as if the water is squeezed from the clouds as they lift up and over Mt. Wilson.  And guess what is sitting under that location?  Opids camp.

Bill Hoffer, a spokesman at the National Weather Service's station in Oxnard, said the area's location also brings it more thunder and lightning than the L.A. Basin and its foothills get.

"Their terrain — being uphill, it really forces the clouds to develop and drop precipitation in that area," added Laura Edwards, a California climate specialist at the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno. "They are an ideal location."

The two dozen cabins of the camp cling to the steep hillside. The layout means that even in the heaviest downpours, there is little threat of flooding to the buildings because the water is channeled down the mountain. None of the mocha-colored wood cabins has suffered major flooding or leakage, though some lodgers have complained about ants looking for a dry sanctuary.  Johnny Opid got it right.

Johnny Opid was a Forest Service employee who founded the camp with his father in 1910 as a resort for well-to-do visitors. He chose the site carefully; making sure it was high enough up the steep canyon, named Stony Gulch that rainwater would stream past, eventually ending up in the West Fork of the San Gabriel River. A creek adjacent to the camp is deep enough to accommodate most of the runoff, though it has crested at a 20-foot high wood plank bridge after a severe storm. The campground is built on solid granite.

The Long Beach School District bought the facility in 1948 and uses it to teach students about biology, botany, zoology and ecology. Although the district renamed it Camp Hi-Hill, meteorologists and others interested in rainfall tallies still know it as Opids Camp. Meteorologists and weather enthusiasts look at the "Opids Camp" marker on weather maps with a mixture of astonishment and curiosity.

"They get more rain and snow than anyone else," said William Patzert, a meteorologist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Among weather geeks, it's famous."

Opids Camp has come to hold a special place on rain charts. The location often gets three times as much precipitation as the basin, according to a rain gauge at the camp maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

It's impossible to know whether there is a spot in Los Angeles County that received more rain, but Edwards and other forecasters said the terrain of Opids Camp makes it unique.

One of the most extreme rainfall events in the Southland was on October 19-20 2004 in Los Angeles County when Opids Camp received 4.95 inches in 3 hours, 12.79 inches in 24 hours, and 14.63 inches for the storm in a 48-hour period.

During the very next year, on February 24, 2005, Opids Camp had received in one 24 hour period, 20.82 inches.  That brought their season total at the time to 107 inches, only 1 inch short of NINE FEET, and the rainy season was far from over.

The maximum intensity of precipitation for periods of 12 hours or longer which might be expected at intervals of 10 to 100 years is greater in portions of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains in southern California than anywhere else in the continental United States.

Yes, Opids camp is a special place here in the Angeles National Forest.