November-December 2016 came in at a modest 9.8% nationally (of 900 reporting stations), higher than the long-term average, but low compared to recent years that have been more supportive of a significant upward trend of +3.0% through 2015 (p=97%). Noteworthy regional tallies include the Southwest with 20.0% (17th highest) and the Northeast with 0.0% (one of 25 such cases since 1901). While the latter region has shown a significant upward trend since 1901 (+6.2% per century; p=96%), the former has a non-significant negative trend. Therefore, both outcomes were unexpected.

A particularly noteworthy Billion-Dollar Disaster ( https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events) were the firestorms that hit Tennessee near the Great Smoky National Park in November 2016, killing at least 14, thus becoming the deadliest wildfires in the eastern US since 1947 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Great_Smoky_Mountains_wildfires). The Ohio Valley region that includes Tennessee reported 6.1% coverage of 20-yr daily extreme rainfall during this season, below-average but not extreme, and also bucking a highly significant upward trend of +7.4%/century (p=99.6%).