The 2022-23 rainy season saved California from a brutal drought by delivering one of the wettest years on record. And it'd be great if we could keep the good times rolling with yet another major rain and snow year just like it this coming winter.

However, the odds of that happening aren't all that high, according to a recently published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which says the event was about a 1 in 54-year occurrence. That means there was a roughly 2% chance of it happening in the current climate regime. It was so exceptional that the authors said that about 5% of observed sites saw a 1 in 320-year occurrence.