… In California, the most important calendar may be the “water year,” which also begins on October 1, because how much the state’s reservoirs have in storage and how much nature provides in the form of rain and snow are existential factors in the lives of nearly 40 million people. … The current water year begins with healthy water savings. After two relatively wet winters, including the blockbuster 2022-23 season that ended several years of drought, major reservoirs have close to 100%, or above, of historic October levels. … That should be enough to carry the state through a relatively dry 2024-25 winter, which is possible because meteorologists see a 71% chance that the season will be dominated by a La Niña condition in the Pacific Ocean. It often — but not always — tends to push the jetstream to the north, bringing heavier precipitation to the Pacific Northwest but reducing rain and snow to the south, meaning California. 
—Written by Dan Walters, opinion columnist