… Looking at the water season chart that compares different years, the blue line is the jump the state just received from last week’s rain. It not only kick started the season in a big way, it puts this year on a similar starting trajectory that we saw back in 2016-2017, the drought-busting wettest year on record in Northern California.   “Yeah, I wouldn’t expect to see 2016-2017 just yet,” laughed Jay Lund with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “That was a one-in-a-100-year kind of wet water year.” Lund points to the state’s major reservoirs which are now climbing above their historical averages, with sharp jumps compliments from the storm. “Payoff, yeah,” Lund said. “And worries about floods. Because we have a long way to go in this wet season, and we could have floods.” So the storm system was enough to push the state’s water situation towards fuller than normal, with a very long way to go. 

Other weather and climate change articles from across the West:

• Redding Record Searchlight: Lake Shasta level ‘rebounding’ after historic levels of rain in Redding
• Post Independent (Glenwood Springs, Colo.): After winter storm surge, Colorado snowpack levels may flatten amid week-long dry spell
• Active NorCal: Mammoth Mountain records snowiest November in more than a decade
• The Mercury News: Bay Area rain: Final totals show which areas got the most and least in the wettest storm of 2024
• The New York Times: A warning from a California marine heat wave