For the first time ever, San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento have recorded no rainfall for the month of January — nada drop.

San Jose has receiveda record-low .02 inches, and no rain is forecast for at least a week.

Adding more ominous news to California’s historic drought, the Bay Area’s rainy season has swung from boom to bust, with the month of January wrapping up as the driest on record.

“Dismally meager,” is how the state Department of Water Resources on Thursday described the precious Sierra snowpack, which has plummeted statewide to 25 percent of its average for this time of year.

This comes after one of the wettest Decembers in history.

“If anything, it’s reminded me about the drought,” said Scott Brendel, who watched the creek behind his home in San Jose go from a gusher in December to a trickle in January. “We’re not even watering. You see the hills turning brown and it’s always a reminder that we’re not out of the woods.”

The only silver lining of the dry month is that because December was so wet, the rainfall total for the rainy season so far remains slightly above average.

“It’s very hard to feel comfortable,” said Jan Null, the meteorologist who runs Golden Gate Weather Services. “The pattern we’re seeing is reminiscent of last year.”

Last year, the so-called “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” of high pressure off the West Coast diverted rainfall to the north for months and plunged California into its third year of drought. That same kind of ridge has been parked off the coast all of January, but just how ridiculous or resilient it proves to be remains to be seen.

“There aren’t any hints now that the ridge will move, keeping it pretty locked in for 10 days plus,” Null said. “Beyond that we don’t know.”

The impact it has had so far, however, is clear, both in little or no rain and dismal snow totals.

The state’s monthly snowpack survey Thursday near Lake Tahoe’s Echo Summit summed up the bad news: 12 percent of normal, with the equivalent of 2.3 inches of water content in the “meager” snowpack. Other spots around the state were worse, some slightly better — but the outlook is equally dire.

“Unfortunately, today’s manual snow survey makes it likely that California’s drought will run through a fourth consecutive year,” according to a news release from the Department of Water Resources.

The winter snowpack’s water content typically supplies about 30 percent of California’s water needs and is considered water in the bank to melt through the dry summer months. Reservoirs rely on ample runoff from snowmelt to meet demand from summer through fall. After three years of drought and dwindling reservoir levels, the demand is growing.

And drought-weary Californians show signs of conservation fatigue. A poll from the Public Policy Institute of California, released this week, showed 59 percent of residents say the water supply is a big problem in their region, but that’s down from 68 percent in October. However, the poll, conducted Jan. 11-20, may have had different results if December’s rains weren’t so fresh in our minds.

Lauren Pham, of Milpitas, says she’s still conserving, turning off the water while she’s brushing her teeth and taking shorter showers. Her 14-year-old son is another story.

“My son takes long showers,” she said, “and I keep saying, ‘Are you done yet?’ “

As dry as this January is, it’s only a bit drier than last January, when Bay Area cities were breaking records for lack of rain.

Last January, San Francisco received just .06 inches of rain, the lowest amount since records were first kept in 1850. That record is being broken this January — providing there’s no freak rainfall through Saturday — without any measurable rain falling since the new year.

San Jose’s records date back to 1893, and the second-driest January was in 1920, when .10 inches were measured. The third-driest year was last year, when just .12 inches fell.

The dryness plagued the northern and central parts of California — from Eureka, which endured its fourth-driest January on record with 1.36 inches, to Sacramento, which had no rain, down to Fresno, which marked its second-driest January on record.

Southern California has had better luck, enjoying a couple of significant weather systems this month that came up from the south. January doesn’t even rank in its top 15 driest.

As dismal as the rain picture looks for the Bay Area, however, meteorologist Null points out that the region is still well ahead of last year’s rain season, which runs from July 1 through June 30.

With most of the rain coming in December, San Jose has received 10.33 inches so far this season, which is 134 percent of normal, up from 6.35 inches the previous year. Oakland has received 11.67 inches so far this season, which is 103 percent of normal, compared with the 10.5 inches received the previous year.

San Francisco has received 15.09 inches, or 115 percent of normal, up from 12.54 inches last year.

“Even if we don’t get another drop of rainfall in San Francisco for the year,” Null said, “we’ll have had more than we had for the entire last year.”

To emerge from the drought, however, 10 good storms were needed this season — or rainfall of about 150 to 200 percent of normal, he said. And that’s a lot, considering half of the rainy season is already over.

Still, Null added, “I’m always an optimist. You can look historically and we’ve had wet late winters.”

Look at the “Miracle March” in 1991, he said, when four huge storms barreled into California, producing rain and snow 250 percent of normal for the month. It made a big dent into what was then a four-year drought. But it wasn’t until 1993 — when total rainfall was 155 percent of normal — that the drought ended.

Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409. Follow her at twitter.com/juliasulek