In the wet world of Vince Nowell Sr., rain rules supreme.

The 40-year Simi Valley resident has tracked the city's rainfall religiously for the 15 years he's lived in his current home, and the last few weeks have been busy.

"It's a daily event for me if it rains," Nowell, 66, said. "I try to have it set up so I'm catching it from midnight to midnight, to stay as close to the date as possible."

His interest in rain began 49 years ago, when he almost missed his North Hollywood High School graduation because of a 1956 storm.

"I didn't think I was going to be able to get there," he said. "We had no car in the family at that time."

After struggling through the rain, a neighbor with a car drove him to the school just in time.

"Since then, I've paid attention to rain and runoff," he said.

Yet his interest didn't take him through college and work. A retired technical writer, Nowell also taught history at Moorpark College.

Now he spends a lot of time watching the Weather Channel -- MTV for seniors, he calls it -- and carefully logs the day's rain levels from the back yard of his home in the center of Simi Valley.

He mounted an opaque plastic rain gauge he picked up at a hardware store in 1990 on his back patio, where it sits unobtrusively collecting rain.

Every night, during the wet days, Nowell diligently checks the level of water inside the gauge's catch cup.

"He goes plopping out into the yard faithfully and then gets so excited by 1.7 inches of water," his wife, Carole, said, chuckling.

His records fill about two pages of carefully noted, color-coded levels.

Following the National Weather Service's annual calendar of July to June, Nowell has documented roughly the same patterns as reflected by weather officials.

His highest water logged year remains 1997-98, when El Nino dropped 45.74 inches of rain on his back yard.

Not surprisingly, this year, with almost six months remaining in the season, he is closing in on his record year.

As of Wednesday, according to Nowell's records, 24.71 inches had fallen in Simi Valley this season, with one important distinction: Most of that water has come since Dec. 27.

"It's been a lot of rain in a short time, compared to other times," he said.

He really never intended his interest in rain to become so complete, but still he enjoys watching what Mother Nature brings, saying, "It's just a little personal quirk kind of thing."

-- Jake Finch's e-mail address is alljake@hotmail.com.