California singing in the rain

Los Angeles (AFP) – A series of storms that have rolled across California in the past week dumping heavy rain and snow could herald the end of a punishing historic drought, officials said.

“Bye bye Drought. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” tweeted the National Weather Service in Reno, Nevada, which monitors parts of northern California, the area hardest hit by the storms.

According to the US Drought Monitor, the northern part of the state is out of drought conditions, but much of southern California remains in trouble, with some 30 percent still in extreme or exceptional drought conditions.

“In southern California, we’ve had the highest rainfall in at least five years and in northern California it’s the highest rainfall in at least 10 years,” said Tom Fisher, weather specialist for the National Weather Service. 

“For example, if you go up to Santa Rosa, which is up in Sonoma County, normally they would have about three inches (7.5 centimeters) of rain for the month so far, and they’ve had 11 inches,” Fisher said, adding that the same scenario was playing out across much of the state.

That’s a far cry from a year ago, when practically all of California was reeling from a severe five-year drought that left water reservoirs empty, helped spark huge wildfires and led to severe water restrictions.

Authorities warned, however, that although nature was looking greener and the water reservoirs were filling up, it was still too early to cry victory.

“California’s rainy season goes through April, so we’re not out of the woods yet,” Fisher said.

Ted Thomas, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Department of Water Resources, said he was cautiously optimistic and warned that the impact of the long drought could not be erased overnight.

“In California, we have a long history of changing weather conditions, in which for example we start with a very wet winter and end up extremely dry,” he told AFP.

“This is a very large state and conditions are different in different areas.”