Extremes of any type are interesting and right now we are in the midst of an unusual December drought.   At Sea-Tac Airport as of Wednesday night we had only gotten .03 inches so far this month, 2.51 inches BELOW normal.  Spokane has had .02 inches, 1.09 inches below normal.

Checking out the record at Sea-Tac, it appears that we have experienced the DRIEST FIRST TWO WEEKS ON RECORD at that site.  Wow.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate the situation is with maps showing the percent of normal rain over the past 14 days.  Reddish colors indicate less than 25% of normal.  Most of the west is red!  And a great deal of the West had less than 5% of normal for the past two weeks.

 Or you can look at the departure from normal precipitation over the period (see below).  We are down more than two inches over the entire western side of the Cascade, with far larger deficits in the mountains.

There is some light rain this morning, but that won’t be enough to change the story much.  By 7 AM Sea-Tac has received only .02 inches and the Langley radar shows nothing offshore.  The problem, of course, is the extraordinarily persistent ridge over the eastern Pacific….and though ridge is weakening a bit (allowing some weak and splitting systems to influence us), it should still be in place for a while.

The other side of the coin is that we have been unusually cold… here is the difference of the maximum temperature from normal for the past two weeks…virtually all of Washington State except the Cascades and the eastern slopes are well below normal (by 3-6F).  Some folks are claiming we will have the driest or coldest December on record….I think they are premature…..but the first half has certainly been unusual, and a contradiction to at least one expectation of La Nina, during which entire winter season is usually wetter than normal.