In order to explore vegetation adaptation to climate variability and the impacts on water balance dynamics, the inter-regional and the inter-annual variability of both water availability and vegetation productivity are investigated. The Horton index, which is the ratio between actual evapotranspiration and catchment wetting as a measure of vegetation water use at catchment-scale, is revisited to quantify the effects of growing-season water availability on hydrologic partitioning at catchment scale. It is shown that the estimated Horton index is relatively constant irrespective of inter-annual climate variability. In addition, the Horton index is compared with catchment-scale vegetation rain use efficiency. The results show that there is an interesting pattern in the response of vegetation water use to water availability. When water becomes the limiting factor for vegetation productivity, the catchment-scale vegetation rain use efficiency converges to a common maximum value in agreement with earlier findings at the ecosystem level.