Oh, the atmospheric river did hit California, and pretty hard in some places. Last month was the wettest October on record here in San Francisco. The area around Dixie (where there was a big fire earlier this year) saw landslides.

According to a podcast I listened to, this pattern might actually be bad because alternating cycles of extreme rain and extreme dryness means more vegetation growth during the wet months which in turn means more fuel to burn during the dry months.