Comparing This Year to Last

I have had several people ask where does the Southwest stand this year compared to last year as far as precipitation goes? I aim to please, so here you go.

The above chart shows for each city listed rainfall year-to-date (July 1 through Midnight last night), the percentage of normal, what normal is, and what fell during the same period in 2008-2009.

In almost all cases in California and Nevada, this year is better to much better than last year at the same time. Most places have above-normal precipitation, with some places nearly double what they had last year at the same time. In California, the only exception would be San Diego.

Now in Arizona, precipitation is still running well below normal for the July to current time period. But a good bit of the reason for this is because of the exceptionally dry monsoon season this area had last summer. If one takes out that time period and looks at October 1 to now, the numbers are different, especially in Phoenix and Flagstaff.

Phoenix-90% of normal Flagstaff-128% of normal Tucson-63% of normal

It still seems to me that toward the end of next week and the following week, it could get pretty stormy again in a large part of the Southwest. Before then, two weak storms will bring some rain. The first to northern California tomorrow into Saturday, and farther south in central California tomorrow night into Saturday. No rain is expected in Southern California, southern Nevada or Arizona. The second storm will again mainly affect the northern third of California and not bring any rain to Southern California and Arizona.