It is 2022 and it isn’t improving. Drought conditions didn’t disappear like many hoped. It’s grim.
Very. Getting about time to start dreading fire season again - it’s liable to be another very bad one.
I went so many years without thinking about a “fire season” and enjoying the outdoors with only minor inconveniences. Now, it’s hard to plan outdoor adventures because you never know. Just last year we had a minor trip that we had to move multiple times due to fires. Due to fires…not just smoke. We’ve abandoned entire trips because everywhere around us is engulfed in smoke and you can’t just relocate unless you are willing to drive a day+. Grim.
This month we’ve seen some relief in NW Oregon, and especially in Washington. For comparison, Eugene got about .15" (~4mm) of rain last April, but this year we’ve gotten about 4" (102mm) just so far depending on what you read. (The local paper, whose stats are two days behind, says 3.19" (81mm) but cocorahs.com says well over four inches.)
Normal for the month, quoth Wikipedia, is 3.3" (85mm).
Next month could be bone dry again, so who knows! But it’s very encouraging to see such a wet spring, so far. With the ground getting so saturated, it won’t dry out as much in the summer.
Yeah, we have been having a relatively wet April so far here in Northern CA. The storm we are having today is more like winter than spring - the mountains are getting hammered with 1-2 feet of snow, and here in the valley lots of good rain showers. I even had to drain an inch of water from my pool. Jan-Mar was bone dry around here, but the late season (for us) moisture is most welcome - the timing is good and will hopefully blunt the hot/dry season a little on the front end.
We’ve been pretty wet, too, but they’ve tightened the watering restrictions for the summer (May–October) anyway: once a week lawn watering at most.
We have a couple of nasty fires going now, one just outside Prescott and another one by Flagstaff. The air quality is horrible.
We do have a thread for the 2022 fire season. 
Thank you. I was just thinking that there should be one, but got distracted instead of looking for it