Man, was last a wet year, huh? Storms at the front, storms at the end, unprecedented snowfall in December . . . it just had to be a record-breaker, didn't it?
While we await numbers from the Pacific Northwest overall, take a look at this analysis in the McMinnville News-Register: The measurement area in the North Willamette valley in 2008 turned in one of the driest years on record, one of the very driest in the last half-century:
"In 2008, McMinnville received only 24.7 inches of precipitation. That's nearly 20 inches less than its 50-year average of 44.66 inches. It's just 55 percent of normal. It's also the smallest total since World War II. Precipitation came in below average every single month of 2008, even December, when the area received more than 18 inches of snow."