Bone dry here in Utah. Just as local government has been lowering their guard on the Great Salt Lake issue due to a couple strong snowpack years. Really hope we're proactive in response to the lack of snow.
I've lived in California my whole life (and the same town for most of that). This was the most rain I can remember in decades and the most "destruction" I've seen caused by it. Between the ground being saturated and wind before/after/during the storms there were plenty of downed trees.
We were also down to running sprinklers once a week (lawns are silly), but have had them off entirely for a bit now.
The statewide rain totals for the 2025-2026 water year so far rank 6th out of the years of the 21st century, so aren't that remarkable in context. Do you live in a place that got slapped with a peculiarly high rainfall?
California is big! That's also why there have technically been small parts of California which have been in drought for the last few years while most of the state is in good shape.
This year, Southern California is having a wet year while most of Northern California is having a relatively dry one.
We're north of Los Angeles and the area has never really handled rain well. This is also entirely anecdotal having lived here for ~35 years.
Some of the towns in our county have developments built on floodplanes. In our neighborhood, only some streets have storm drains so many of them flood. On one of the main roads numerous trees fell over damaging walls and homes.
That last set of storms that really stands out were the El Niño events in the early oughts.
I wonder if overall rainfall doesn't tell the whole story. From my experience in SF (and admittedly CA is big and people will have very different experiences) there has been an enormous amount of rainfall early in the season and then another enormous amount over the holidays, but the rest has been dry. The total may not be that much but the acute heavy storms have been pretty intense.
Heavy rain is usually very localized. I live in Norcal and I've seen many situations where we were getting hammered with multiple inches an hour while a few dozen miles away it wasn't raining at all, and vice versa. So even in a wet year whether your neighborhood gets slammed is a crap shoot.
Previous CA resident anecdata, I remember droughts being a normal part of life in central CA 1990-early 2000s. Don't run sprinklers during certain hours, odd/even watering, "the water bill" exclaimations, etc. Like another commentor mentioned I don't anticipate this will last, but it's nice to see the "official" state change even if for a bit.
I recall rather absurd demands such as telling restaurants not to offer water (as if a glass of water makes
any difference) and telling residents to skip showers.
I remember during one drought, the day the LA Department of Water and Power was going to declare water rationing, we got, some crazy number, 7-8" of rain in the basin.
We got so much, we got "Lake San Fernando Valley" as the Sepulveda Dam did the job it was put up to do all those years ago and flooded. People had to move so fast (behind the dam is the a large park and recreation area, no homes were directly impacted) they abandoned their cars, and, later, divers with scuba gear were being arrested for looting them.
strange because this is one of the warmest winters in decades. snow levels are far below normal, i saw 8% of normal in truckee. full reservoirs now are great but keeping them filled depends on a long snow melt going into june. i don’t think this is going to be a good year for that
The warmth partially explains the rain. Storms far across the pacific have formed and traveled east to land on California. Unfortunately it also means, as you said, we can't capture as much of it as snow pack.
It's not quite that dire. Statewide 69% normal to date. Snowpack peaks March-April, so still have a ways to go in the season. https://snow.water.ca.gov
But yeah, snowmelt plays a huge role in supplying water into the summer, so just looking at precipitation totals isn't the full picture.
“I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”
People also forget ARkStorm scenarios, which involve rains akin to 1861-1862, submerging the whole of the Central Valley. Likely several times worse in damages than the biggest earthquake possible in California.
I read that recently and meant to look up the reality of that cycle. I mostly pay attention to ENSO but looking it up now I see there is a 15-30 year PDO cycle.
> And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
Just as true with economic cycles and so many other things.
I've lived in California for 20 years so this is my first year of non-draught. We've been enjoying the unusual prevalence of greenery in Orange County.
In the 70s and 80s there were big beautiful thunderstorms. Lightning would crash down for hours and the torrential fall rains would flood streets in north orange county (tri-city area) again and again. It rained so hard I had to take shelter under a tree when I was 8, due to how the rain and wind was threatening to knock me down. It rained for a week straight once, which was memorable. As was the times the rain ruined Halloween (more than once).
It does rain in deserts, California isn't mostly desert (about 38% by land area), and drought is defined relative to normal rainfall, so even a place that usually has very low rainfall can have droughts.
And also droughts are defined by lower than normal precipitation. So if it didn't rain in a desert, and it's still not raining in a desert, that wouldn't even be a drought anyway.
And is the only state with no drought right now. Although they way they figure it is a bit biased -- it's based on how much water there is compared to historical values, so it's easier to be "drought free" if you've been in a drought for a while.
Yeah hey but for real. The news is focused on California droughts all the time, but my part of flyover country is very, very dry. Like ponds that have never been empty are dry, sort of thing. It's getting bad. . . And we grow all your food.
Between this and all the political nonsense that's happening right now, I feel like a passenger that's noticed the car is out of control while the driver is still opening his beer.
California actually produced the most food of any state. :). But I know what you mean, the water is just as critical in the middle of the country as it is on the edges. Water is critical everywhere, and this problem is just going to get worse and worse.
People shouldn't really be celebrating anything here. Wet winters just mean that the much more important snowpack isn't happening:
> Recent storms have brought snow to the Sierra Nevada mountains, but the state’s snowpack remains below average. According to the Department of Water Resources, the snowpack now stands at 89% of average for this time of year.
> Much of the West has seen warmer-than-average temperatures and relatively little snow so far this winter. The snow in the Rocky Mountains remains far below average, adding to the strains on the overtapped Colorado River, a major water source for Southern California.
Refilling the reservoirs is nice and all, but this is still essentially a payday loan out of the future.
One of the complexities of global warming is that it makes weather more extreme in all directions. It can be true that the same stretch of ground can be more susceptible to flooding in the same year it's more susceptible to drought.
That is basically doomer nonsense. Of course we can and should celebrate the lack of drought, even if there is some mathematically more optimal way for the precipitation to be falling.
The costs of delivering potable water and removing sewage/excess rain from a given lot or area is unrelated to the quantity of rainfall in a timespan measuring less than quite a few years.
Of the $250 of a water bill on Seattle’s Eastside, about $50 of it is something I can do anything about (use less water). The rest is fixed costs even if I never use a drop. It isn’t hard to imagine that California isn’t much different.
Water policy isn't as simple as you might think. Dams aren't a magical fix, they cause a lot of issues (like crashing the salmon populations, etc.). They're expensive to build and maintain, and the water you store in a big reservoir doesn't magically stay in place - you lose a lot to evaporation and you lose a lot that ends up going into the groundwater system. A much bigger part of the problem is western water law, where water rights are assigned based on prior appropriation and are lost if they aren't exercised. That leads to a lot of bullshit, like people growing very water hungry crops (alfalfa, rice) in the middle of the desert.
The reason we don't build like the people who first came to California did isn't because we're stupid, it's because we've learned a lot of lessons the hard way. If you're interested in some of the history I'd recommend Cadillac Desert, which is about western water in general, but which focuses a lot on California (including the machinations that the movie China Town was based on).
Can I ask why you see this as a clearcut issue? Dams have environmental costs, upfront monetary costs, maintenance costs, and can't prevent drought if conditions persist for multiple years. Why are dams the best way to address drought?
All the best sites were built on long ago. Dams require favorable geography. More can be built to squeeze out a bit more storage, but there are diminishing returns.
dams have trade offs that they stop sediment outflows which can cause faster erosion. this is a big reason many california beaches have gone from mostly sandy to mostly rocky
If you look into the actual design capacity of our municipal water systems, many of them were designed for far larger populations. The EBMUD, for example, intentionally secured 325 million gallons per day in upstream capacity because that was 10x the needs of the service area in 1929. Implicitly they assumed that the service area would grow to 4 million people, but it never did, primarily because of zoning. Today EBMUD delivers only about 120 MGD. We could more than double the service area population without water issues.
The new Sites Reservoir and capacity increase of the existing San Luis Reservoir are both expected to start construction this year. Several other recent proposals like the Pacheos Reservoir have been cancelled due to cost but it is not the case that California is doing nothing re: new water infrastructure.
Sites Reservoir isn't going to do a damned thing for municipal water systems in most of the state. You have to remember that there is not such a thing as a statewide municipal water policy. Every city or region has its own thing going on. The Sites capacity is dedicated to its investors, so depending on where you live it could be a helpful resource, or it could be irrelevant.
https://archive.is/aB3c4
Ironically, the rest of the country is having a drought:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/01/18/winter-dro...
Bone dry here in Utah. Just as local government has been lowering their guard on the Great Salt Lake issue due to a couple strong snowpack years. Really hope we're proactive in response to the lack of snow.
Same in idaho. We are looking at historic lows for our reservoirs.
Colorado is having a record low snow season. It's been tough for skiing.
I've lived in California my whole life (and the same town for most of that). This was the most rain I can remember in decades and the most "destruction" I've seen caused by it. Between the ground being saturated and wind before/after/during the storms there were plenty of downed trees.
We were also down to running sprinklers once a week (lawns are silly), but have had them off entirely for a bit now.
Spent 7+ years north of Truckee. There have been wetter/more snow years.
not even close to 2023 or 2017 seasons here in norcal, not by a mile...
The statewide rain totals for the 2025-2026 water year so far rank 6th out of the years of the 21st century, so aren't that remarkable in context. Do you live in a place that got slapped with a peculiarly high rainfall?
California is big! That's also why there have technically been small parts of California which have been in drought for the last few years while most of the state is in good shape.
This year, Southern California is having a wet year while most of Northern California is having a relatively dry one.
We're north of Los Angeles and the area has never really handled rain well. This is also entirely anecdotal having lived here for ~35 years.
Some of the towns in our county have developments built on floodplanes. In our neighborhood, only some streets have storm drains so many of them flood. On one of the main roads numerous trees fell over damaging walls and homes.
That last set of storms that really stands out were the El Niño events in the early oughts.
I wonder if overall rainfall doesn't tell the whole story. From my experience in SF (and admittedly CA is big and people will have very different experiences) there has been an enormous amount of rainfall early in the season and then another enormous amount over the holidays, but the rest has been dry. The total may not be that much but the acute heavy storms have been pretty intense.
Perhaps GP is thinking of last winter?
Heavy rain is usually very localized. I live in Norcal and I've seen many situations where we were getting hammered with multiple inches an hour while a few dozen miles away it wasn't raining at all, and vice versa. So even in a wet year whether your neighborhood gets slammed is a crap shoot.
Previous CA resident anecdata, I remember droughts being a normal part of life in central CA 1990-early 2000s. Don't run sprinklers during certain hours, odd/even watering, "the water bill" exclaimations, etc. Like another commentor mentioned I don't anticipate this will last, but it's nice to see the "official" state change even if for a bit.
I recall rather absurd demands such as telling restaurants not to offer water (as if a glass of water makes any difference) and telling residents to skip showers.
I remember during one drought, the day the LA Department of Water and Power was going to declare water rationing, we got, some crazy number, 7-8" of rain in the basin.
We got so much, we got "Lake San Fernando Valley" as the Sepulveda Dam did the job it was put up to do all those years ago and flooded. People had to move so fast (behind the dam is the a large park and recreation area, no homes were directly impacted) they abandoned their cars, and, later, divers with scuba gear were being arrested for looting them.
We are having an unusually dry and sunny winter in PNW.. I wonder if it is related.
strange because this is one of the warmest winters in decades. snow levels are far below normal, i saw 8% of normal in truckee. full reservoirs now are great but keeping them filled depends on a long snow melt going into june. i don’t think this is going to be a good year for that
The warmth partially explains the rain. Storms far across the pacific have formed and traveled east to land on California. Unfortunately it also means, as you said, we can't capture as much of it as snow pack.
It's not quite that dire. Statewide 69% normal to date. Snowpack peaks March-April, so still have a ways to go in the season. https://snow.water.ca.gov
But yeah, snowmelt plays a huge role in supplying water into the summer, so just looking at precipitation totals isn't the full picture.
Here's the data from the Berkeley snow lab, located along I80 at the Sugar Bowl exit: https://cssl.berkeley.edu/
Snowfall is currently 75% of normal.
As John Steinback said in East of Eden:
“I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”
People also forget ARkStorm scenarios, which involve rains akin to 1861-1862, submerging the whole of the Central Valley. Likely several times worse in damages than the biggest earthquake possible in California.
I read that recently and meant to look up the reality of that cycle. I mostly pay attention to ENSO but looking it up now I see there is a 15-30 year PDO cycle.
This is practically all that need be said on the topic
> And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
Just as true with economic cycles and so many other things.
Sounds like the addiction cycle.
I've lived in California for 20 years so this is my first year of non-draught. We've been enjoying the unusual prevalence of greenery in Orange County.
In the 70s and 80s there were big beautiful thunderstorms. Lightning would crash down for hours and the torrential fall rains would flood streets in north orange county (tri-city area) again and again. It rained so hard I had to take shelter under a tree when I was 8, due to how the rain and wind was threatening to knock me down. It rained for a week straight once, which was memorable. As was the times the rain ruined Halloween (more than once).
Parts of Orange County are really beautiful after the rare good rain. Doesn't wash away the rampant bigotry, though.
Groundwater and aquifers still depleted.
I had a joke that hit well: "California is in a drought? Who would have thought it doesn't rain in a desert."
Are you under the impression that California as a whole is a desert?
It does rain in deserts, California isn't mostly desert (about 38% by land area), and drought is defined relative to normal rainfall, so even a place that usually has very low rainfall can have droughts.
It must only be funny to people who are unfamiliar with California’s climate.
I don't get it.
It does rain in deserts, of course. But most of California is not a desert anyway.
It’s a joke relying on several layers of not understanding basic concepts for its humor. Kind of worried about the environment in which it “hit well”.
And also droughts are defined by lower than normal precipitation. So if it didn't rain in a desert, and it's still not raining in a desert, that wouldn't even be a drought anyway.
And is the only state with no drought right now. Although they way they figure it is a bit biased -- it's based on how much water there is compared to historical values, so it's easier to be "drought free" if you've been in a drought for a while.
Yeah hey but for real. The news is focused on California droughts all the time, but my part of flyover country is very, very dry. Like ponds that have never been empty are dry, sort of thing. It's getting bad. . . And we grow all your food.
Between this and all the political nonsense that's happening right now, I feel like a passenger that's noticed the car is out of control while the driver is still opening his beer.
California actually produced the most food of any state. :). But I know what you mean, the water is just as critical in the middle of the country as it is on the edges. Water is critical everywhere, and this problem is just going to get worse and worse.
> And we grow all your food
Well, not all of it, California leads IIRC.
yeh, my natural pond in Michigan has lost about 15 feet, the snow we're getting now won't be enough to regain it
People shouldn't really be celebrating anything here. Wet winters just mean that the much more important snowpack isn't happening:
> Recent storms have brought snow to the Sierra Nevada mountains, but the state’s snowpack remains below average. According to the Department of Water Resources, the snowpack now stands at 89% of average for this time of year.
> Much of the West has seen warmer-than-average temperatures and relatively little snow so far this winter. The snow in the Rocky Mountains remains far below average, adding to the strains on the overtapped Colorado River, a major water source for Southern California.
Refilling the reservoirs is nice and all, but this is still essentially a payday loan out of the future.
One of the complexities of global warming is that it makes weather more extreme in all directions. It can be true that the same stretch of ground can be more susceptible to flooding in the same year it's more susceptible to drought.
That is basically doomer nonsense. Of course we can and should celebrate the lack of drought, even if there is some mathematically more optimal way for the precipitation to be falling.
This definitely isn't doomer nonsense. Rain is great - we'll take what we can get here in CA, but the snowpack is far more important.
And yet our water rates are still as if we are in a drought.
The costs of delivering potable water and removing sewage/excess rain from a given lot or area is unrelated to the quantity of rainfall in a timespan measuring less than quite a few years.
Of the $250 of a water bill on Seattle’s Eastside, about $50 of it is something I can do anything about (use less water). The rest is fixed costs even if I never use a drop. It isn’t hard to imagine that California isn’t much different.
But its so hot lol
The dams in california were built years ago for a smaller population and since then they've only removed them.
If we simply built like the people who first came to california did we would never have water shortages again.
Any water shortage is a 1:1 failure of the state to do the clear and obvious task needed.
Water policy isn't as simple as you might think. Dams aren't a magical fix, they cause a lot of issues (like crashing the salmon populations, etc.). They're expensive to build and maintain, and the water you store in a big reservoir doesn't magically stay in place - you lose a lot to evaporation and you lose a lot that ends up going into the groundwater system. A much bigger part of the problem is western water law, where water rights are assigned based on prior appropriation and are lost if they aren't exercised. That leads to a lot of bullshit, like people growing very water hungry crops (alfalfa, rice) in the middle of the desert.
The reason we don't build like the people who first came to California did isn't because we're stupid, it's because we've learned a lot of lessons the hard way. If you're interested in some of the history I'd recommend Cadillac Desert, which is about western water in general, but which focuses a lot on California (including the machinations that the movie China Town was based on).
A lot of stuff re: Salmon Populations is primarily around native groups wanting to continue their traditional life styles.
In the era of Trump/Republicans, I don't expect native issues to matter at all. "Drill baby drill" and all that.
So, actually, it is pretty simple if you're willing to finish the settler colonialist project that is our country.
You should really read the book mentioned in the post you're responding to.
Can I ask why you see this as a clearcut issue? Dams have environmental costs, upfront monetary costs, maintenance costs, and can't prevent drought if conditions persist for multiple years. Why are dams the best way to address drought?
All the best sites were built on long ago. Dams require favorable geography. More can be built to squeeze out a bit more storage, but there are diminishing returns.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/dams-in-california/
At best dams let you draw down water based on average rainfall. They cost water via evaporation if you don’t have excess rainfall to store.
Thus removing dams was actually useful amid a 25 year drought.
dams have trade offs that they stop sediment outflows which can cause faster erosion. this is a big reason many california beaches have gone from mostly sandy to mostly rocky
If you look into the actual design capacity of our municipal water systems, many of them were designed for far larger populations. The EBMUD, for example, intentionally secured 325 million gallons per day in upstream capacity because that was 10x the needs of the service area in 1929. Implicitly they assumed that the service area would grow to 4 million people, but it never did, primarily because of zoning. Today EBMUD delivers only about 120 MGD. We could more than double the service area population without water issues.
The new Sites Reservoir and capacity increase of the existing San Luis Reservoir are both expected to start construction this year. Several other recent proposals like the Pacheos Reservoir have been cancelled due to cost but it is not the case that California is doing nothing re: new water infrastructure.
Sites Reservoir isn't going to do a damned thing for municipal water systems in most of the state. You have to remember that there is not such a thing as a statewide municipal water policy. Every city or region has its own thing going on. The Sites capacity is dedicated to its investors, so depending on where you live it could be a helpful resource, or it could be irrelevant.