Another Wet Winter

The numbers are in for precipitation for this 5-month winter of 2019-2020, and it was another wet one. In fact this was the 13th wettest of the last 71 winters. Hopefully the trend of three good winters in the 2010's will continue for the 2020's. Though the January ONI was a bit into El Niño territory, there is a duration requirement which means that when all is said and done the winter as a whole will have been at the high end of neutral territory, not quite enough to be considered an El Niño winter.

This winter's precipitation was skewed toward the first month-and-a-half of the five months. November was 400% of average (1.74 inches above average), while December was 126% of average, most of that in the first half of December. January was 76% of average, while February and March were each close to average. Thus the total for December through March was close to average. But November was the wettest November of the last 71 years. So this winter's good performance was the result of a fast start during the last two weeks of November, combined with the last four months together keeping up not just with the median but with the mean.