Rain is weird lately. One minute you’re looking at a cracked, dusty backyard, and the next, the local news is showing people kayaking down Main Street. If you feel like the weather has lost its mind, you aren't alone. Looking back at the rain totals this year—and by that, I mean the full data dump from 2025 that we’re finally processing here in early 2026—the numbers are, frankly, all over the place.
The big headline? The contiguous United States ended 2025 in the "driest third" of the record books. We averaged about 29.19 inches across the lower 48. That’s nearly an inch below the 20th-century average. But that tiny number hides some absolute chaos on the ground.
What the Rain Totals This Year Actually Tell Us
If you live in Kentucky, you probably think the "dry year" narrative is a total joke. Kentucky just had its 10th-wettest year on record. More than a third of the counties there saw a foot of extra rain. Meanwhile, if you’re in Hawaii, you’re dealing with the third-driest year since they started keeping these specific records 35 years ago. The islands were missing almost 20 inches of their usual tropical soakings.
It’s this "all or nothing" vibe that defined the rain totals this year. We saw the same thing in Europe. Germany had its driest March ever recorded in 2025. The Rhine River dropped so low in Cologne that it was basically a stream compared to its usual self. Then, you look at Spain and Portugal, and they were getting slammed with 165% of their normal rainfall during the same period.
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The La Niña Factor
A lot of this comes down to the La Niña that’s been hanging around like an uninvited house guest. As of January 2026, NOAA is still reporting a "La Niña Advisory." It’s been driving the bus for months. Usually, this means the Pacific Northwest gets soggy while the Southwest and the Southeast turn into a tinderbox.
But La Niña hasn't been following the old script perfectly. We’re seeing "wetter" La Niña winters more often than we used to. Since the 90s, the signal has shifted. Instead of just being dry, these patterns are becoming more erratic. It’s like the atmosphere is holding its breath and then sneezing all at once.
Global Extremes You Might Have Missed
Honestly, some of the specific station data is hard to wrap your head around:
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- The Atacama Desert: One of the driest places on Earth saw 130 mm of rain in April. Its yearly average is 5 mm. That is 26 years' worth of rain in a few days.
- Australia’s Split Personality: Northern Australia was 21% above average. Southern Australia? Portions of Victoria and South Australia had their driest year since 1900.
- The Sudd Wetlands: In South Sudan, the inundation just won't quit, while right next door in Ethiopia and Somalia, the drought is so severe it’s basically a humanitarian emergency.
Why "Average" Rainfall is a Lying Statistic
The problem with looking at a single number for rain totals this year is that "average" doesn't exist anymore. If I put one foot in a bucket of ice and the other in a fire, on average, I’m comfortable. But in reality, I'm suffering.
That’s 2025 in a nutshell. We are seeing a massive intensification of the hydrological cycle. Warmer air holds more moisture. $7%$ more for every degree Celsius, if you want to get technical about the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. So, when it finally does rain, it doesn't just drizzle. It dumps.
We saw this with Hurricane Melissa. Even though it didn't hit the US mainland, it was a Category 5 monster that tied for the strongest landfall on record in the Atlantic basin when it hit Jamaica. The sheer volume of water these storms move now is staggering.
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Soil Moisture vs. Surface Rain
One thing the experts at Copernicus and the JRC (Joint Research Centre) are pointing out is that even when it rains, the ground isn't always "feeling" it. Because 2025 was so hot—it pretty much tied with 2023 for the warmest year ever—the evaporation rates are through the roof.
You can get a decent rainstorm, but if the sun comes out and it’s $100^{\circ}F$ the next day, that water is gone before it hits the aquifers. This is why "hydrological drought" is persisting in places like the American Southwest and the Mediterranean despite occasional heavy storms.
Managing Your Own "Rain Totals"
So, what do you actually do with this information? If you’re a gardener, a homeowner, or just someone tired of their basement flooding, the "new normal" requires a bit of a strategy shift.
- Stop trusting the calendar. The old "April showers" logic is dead. You need to be ready for six weeks of nothing followed by a month's worth of rain in three hours.
- Rain Gardens and Permeable Surfaces. If you have a yard, look into rain gardens. They are basically basins designed to catch that "big dump" of water and let it soak in slowly rather than just running off into your foundation.
- Check your gutters... again. Seriously. Most suburban gutter systems are designed for the rain intensities of the 1980s. They can't handle the 2026 "atmospheric river" style downpours.
- Monitor the ENSO status. Since we have a 75% chance of transitioning to "ENSO-neutral" by March 2026, expect the weather patterns to shift again. Neutral years are often the most unpredictable because there’s no big Pacific "engine" forcing the jet stream into a specific lane.
The final word on rain totals this year is that the total volume of water on Earth hasn't changed, but the delivery schedule is completely broken. We’re moving into an era of "weather whiplash." One year you're buying a heavy-duty sump pump; the next, you're installing a xeriscape rock garden.
Actionable Next Steps:
Check your local municipal "flood map" updates for 2026. Many cities are currently redrawing these based on the 2024-2025 data. If your house was "safe" five years ago, it might not be labeled that way today. Also, if you’re in a drought-prone zone like the Southwest or Southeast US, now is the window to install rain barrels before the spring transition to ENSO-neutral. Those early spring storms might be the last reliable water you get before a potentially scorching summer.