Pacific Northwest’s ‘Wet Drought’ Possible Sign of Futur

Oregon and Washington aren’t currently in the same dire straits as California, having at least received a fair bit of rain this winter, but the warm, snowless conditions could be a harbinger of the future in an overall warming world...The storms that were prevented from hitting California did provide rains to the Pacific Northwest, with winter precipitation in Oregon only about 30 percent below average, not even in the bottom 10 years historically, said Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Service. But the sky-high temperatures that marked the warmest winter on record for Washington and the second warmest for Oregon meant that much of the precipitation fell as rain, and not snow.