It seems from the great wailing and moaning that we have arrived at a new definition of drought. The new definition is whatever is inconvenient for 30 million people regardless how much rain falls.

I am a big fan of the San Francisco dataset because it is the oldest. In the graphic below the five lowest rainfall years are in thin lines and the last four below average years are heavy lines.

The 2013(-14) rainfall season is the twelfth driest in the SF data. The current 2014 season is looking average so far.

Welcome to California!