Weather 2006-7: So far; relatively dry.

When I think about how we all enjoy talking about the weather, I recall a story Carl Bock liked to tell from my old haunts in the high desert grasslands near Elgin, Arizona. Like Carmel Valley, rainfall varies enormously from year to year. In the early 1980's a long dry spell ended with some spectacularly wet monsoons starting each July. Grass was tall, and long-dry creeks were gurgling along merrily. Each day the old-timers would gather over coffee at the local cafe and talk about the weather. There, the talk was often of how much rain fell in one small watershed while only a few miles away it was dry that night. The statistical concept of an average remained elusive. Carl recalls one neighboring rancher's observation: "You know I have lived in this country for over 25 years" he said, "and this is about the first typical summer we've had".

With this memorable quote in mind, here are the data from 2006 with a total to date. We are bit warm and a bit dry (5.5" versus 11.2" for average so far), but much remains to be seen as our "rain year" goes from July to June and we are just at January. It is still predicted to be an "El Nino" year, but the really destructive wet "El Nino" years were already far, far wetter than we are at this time in the annual cycle.