Browsing the news yesterday afternoon, I spotted a story in the Mercury News reporting that Sierra-Nevada area recorded least rain during the January-February period since records began in 1921 (“Sierra Nevada snowpack disappearing after driest January-February in recorded history, third year of California drought all but inevitable“). The newspaper reported the area normally provides nearly 1/3 of the state’s water supply.

It got me wondering about February rainfall in Honolulu. I has seemed unusually dry.

That sent me digging online for the answer, which I found on a National Weather Service website.

It turns out there’s quite a bit of variation year to year.

I first compared February’s measured rainfall with other years in the past 20 years. Ouch. This was the driest year recorded in that period.

Then I pushed back in time, first back to 1980, then 1940, and then a full century, back to 1922.

February 2022 goes down as the driest February in the past 100 years.

According to the data provided, the Honolulu area had only .05 inches of rain in February. The average February over the entire period 1922-2022 was 1.95 inches.

So last month Honolulu had about 2.6% of its average February rainfall.

Here are two tables that I found interesting.

First, here are ten years since 1922 with the lowest recorded rainfall in the Honolulu area.

And then here’s a summary of the century, with average rainfall, maximum rainfall, and minimum rainfall recorded over the past 100 years, month by month.

I’m no expert at this stuff, just a curious blogger. You might want to visit that National Weather Service site and check out what other factoids you can dredge up.