Thanks to a significant and ongoing "atmospheric river" event, Bishop, California has already received more precipitation this year (5.00") than their annual climatology (4.84"). Based on NWS COOP sites with at least 50 years of data, the featured map presents the minimum year to date period that a given site was able to reach its present day annual precipitation total by. For example, sites in gray would have had at least one year with a year to date total by the end of January exceeding the yearly average. There is a nice and informative pattern to be seen over the contiguous US. Values in Iowa are in the July through August range, which means that the earliest a given site has received at least ~30 some inches of rain was by 1 July. Of course, having such an early date is only possible for sites that are already quite arid and can experience such significant events during the cold season.

Voting:
Good = 13
Bad = 0
Abstain = 2

Tags:   precip