Californians thirsting for relief from a parched, nearly rainless start to the state’s wet season are finally getting some relief this week. The single meteorological factor contributing to one of the driest final three months of the year on record in California has been a stubborn area of high pressure aloft. Nicknamed the “ridiculously resilient ridge” during the heart of the state’s exceptional drought earlier in the decade, this atmospheric roadblock has steered the Pacific storm track well north of California much of the fall and early winter so far.