Running Precipitation Total

Fairbanks has been on a precipitation roller coaster ride the last few months. It's been either feast or famine. It has seemed to me that Fairbanks is always running a deficit for precipitation whenever I looked at the daily or monthly climate summary. As it turns out, when looking at a 30-day running average of precipitation, Fairbanks has been in a deficit 59% of the time since January 1st, 2011, and in a surplus 41% of the time. Amazingly, Anchorage has been just the opposite. Since January 1st, 2011, Anchorage's 30-day precipitation total has been in a surplus 64% of the time and in a defect only 36% of the time. Quite a difference.

The chart below shows the 30-day precipitation surplus or deficit for both Anchorage and Fairbanks over the aforementioned time period.