It often appears that stories like this are talking about increased precipitation here and decreased there.....

It seems to me that probably the overall precipitation (at least for the contiguous 48) is probably about the same.

It would make sense ... overall, the earth is a closed system. The amount of water evaporating from the oceans every day world wide has be about the same, or else "sea level" would be changing on a rapid cycle.

So the amount of atmospheric water entering the US on the West Coast maybe stays fairly constant averaged out over a year or longer.

BUT what happens is where that water goes in the US ... prevailing winds push a greater percentage north or greater percentage south. LOCAL conditions, such a higher mountain peaks, then cause more rain to fall out of that atmospheric water in different places.

Any Atmospheric Science people on the board? Is that roughly true, or does the whole US total precipitation rise and fall alot? Do you have to expand all the way to "all of north america" to make it average out (i.e. Mexico/US/Canada averages out, but not US alone?)

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OFTEN we hear stories about horrible fires because of dry conditions in states A and B, while simultaneously hearing about flooding in states X and Y. Or at least, it often sounds that way on the news.