January precipitation anomalies worldwide

Now we just need to know the standard deviation in the years 1961-1990 to say if there was anything special about this January.

Seems like you can get this data for any month or year (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2010/11). I am not expert on this, is there anything special about January 2011?

Am I reading the diagram right? Does it indicate that most of the US was dryer than usual with a lot more rain/snow in the upper mid west?

So we had a January that was out of the ordinary. I'm sure you wanted to make a point, I'm just not sure what it is.