[killarney_sailor]

I get the impression that what is causing the problem (too dry in some places and too wet in others) is a blockage in the normal movement of the jet streams (not the speed of the streams but their position). Normally these large waves move slowly eastward but for the last year or so they have been pretty stationary. The result is that whatever weather you are getting you keep getting since the streams keep bringing the same stuff. Where we are in southern Ontario it meant a very, very cold winter and a cool, rainy summer, while you and California are getting drought conditions. There is a large, stable, dry air mass in the southern part of the North Atlantic that is killing off tropical cyclonic activity before it really gets going. I would imagine that people in Texas would not mind a tropical storm bringing six inches of rain, but that seems unlikely this year.

Don't want to start a pointless, political bunfight since it is a scientific question rather than a political one, but I get a sense that this is being driven by global warming. Whether it will continue I don't know, but it does have some devastating possibilities.