One reason 1965 was so bad is that it was the lowest precip total on record.....but it was already following 2 years of low precip. By itself, it would have been pretty bad, but the fact it came on the heels of back to back very low precip years already made it so much worse.
BTW, 1965 is so anomalous, that the 2nd driest year (1910) is closer to 14th place (2016) than 1965's total.