Sacramento Far Behind The Mark Again

(Dec. 11):

I've been in Sacramento now for 30 years, and 2020 has had the driest start to a rainy season I've ever seen. It's even worse than the infamous 2013 rainy-season start, which led to two years of extraordinary drought. We're about 14% of a normal pace. Even if we suffered flooding rains from here on out we'd never catch up to normal. That's how bad it is. 

So, I looked back in weather records, back to 1877, to see where 2020 stands. To my surprise, dreadfully-dry rainy-season starts aren't all that uncommon. The ends of the years 1910, 1911, 1917, 1958, 1959, 1976, 1986, and 2013 had similarly bad starts. Still, it looks like only 1911 had a worse start than 2020 has. 

Mother Nature had better start getting serious with the rain here.

(Dec. 13 update, after the rain):  Now we're about 37% of normal!  Keep going!