Rescaled range analysis of precipitation in the sample period 1893-2014 for ten USHCN stations in five states of the USA does not provide evidence of dependence, long term memory, or persistence in the time series. All of the observed Hurst exponents of precipitation are indicative of Gaussian randomness. Therefore, multi-decadal and non-periodic drought and flood events observed at some of these stations are more likely to be irregular cyclical phenomena of nature than the random effects of persistence and long term memory in the data.