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Despite a dry winter and absolutely zero rain in August, the drought in Southern Oregon isn’t one for the record books so far. Medford saw 100th of an inch over the past two months, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Michelle McAuley, who described the entire region as “very, very dry” this summer. In the Medford area, that .01 inch of rain — which stemmed from a July 15 storm that sparked dozens of wildfires throughout Southern Oregon — was enough to put 2018’s July and August ahead of a dozen summers in Medford this past century, according to McAuley. It’s little more than 1.1 percent of the 0.68 inch “climate normal,” according to McAuley, but that 100th of an inch makes for the 13th driest July and August on record. Climate normal consists of precipitation averages for the two months between 1981 to 2010. The choking smoke that’s plagued Southern Oregon for much of July and August played a role in the weather, particularly when it came to thunderstorms, according to McAuley. There was “subjectively less lightning than usual,” McAuley said, though she lacked data to compare with other years. “The smoke suppresses thunderstorms a little bit,” McAuley said. Thunderstorms need heat as well as moisture to form. Heat’s needed to cause the air to rise, but “smoke prevents heating,” she said. For much of the summer, wind systems that carry moisture into the area were in a weaker pattern, according to McAuley. “A lot of the summer we were in a split flow jet pattern,” McAuley said. For August, all counties in the Southern Oregon Cascades region, including Jackson, Josephine, Klamath, Curry, Siskiyou and Modoc, were between zero and 5 percent of climate normal, a figure McAuley called “really low.” “The whole region’s been very, very dry this summer,” McAuley said. “Winter and spring weren’t much better.” Rainfall this past winter and spring was very low, but again not a record-setter, according to McAuley. January through June was the 16th driest on record, tying us with 2002. In October and November of last year, McAuley said, Southern Oregon was “right around normal,” but December 2017 saw .85 inch of precipitation — less than a quarter of the 3.49 inches Medford normally gets. “That’s a pretty big deficit,” McAuley said. January saw 1.6 inches, about 66 percent of the 2.43 inch climate normal; February saw 1.05 inches, just above half of the 2.01 normal. “Really, the December really hurt us,” McAuley said. For January through August, Medford had 6.63 inches, about 65 percent of the 10.14 inch climate normal. Medford saw only 4.27 inches at the same point in 2013, which was the second-driest year since 1955. Reach Mail Tribune reporter Nick Morgan at 541-776-4471 or [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter at @ MTCrimeBeat .