New rainfall totals show that no person alive has experienced a three-week period in the Bay Area as wet as these past 21 days. The last time it happened, Abraham Lincoln was president.

From Dec. 26 to Jan. 15, 17 inches of rain fell in downtown San Francisco. That’s the second-wettest three-week period at any time in San Francisco’s recorded history since daily records began in 1849 during the Gold Rush. And it’s more than five times the city’s historical average of 3.1 inches over the same time.

The only three-week period that was wetter in San Francisco — often used as the benchmark for Bay Area weather because it has the oldest records — came during the Civil War when a drowning 23.01 inches fell from Jan. 5 to Jan. 25, 1862, during a landmark winter that became known as “The Great Flood of 1862.”

“The rainfall numbers over the past three weeks just kept adding up. They became a blur,” said Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services in Half Moon Bay, who compiled the totals. “We had a strong jet stream that was bringing in storms, one after another. It was hard along the way to separate the individual storms.”

So much rain fell since Christmas in Northern California that some cities, including Oakland, Stockton, Modesto and Livermore, already have reached their yearly average rainfall totals. In other words, if it didn’t rain another drop until October, they would still have a normal precipitation year.

The parade of soaking storms, which have caused flooding in the Central Valley, Salinas Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains, along with power outages, mudslides and at least 20 deaths statewide, left the Sierra Nevada with a statewide snowpack 251% of normal on Tuesday.

Light rain is expected Wednesday night, but otherwise forecasts call for dry conditions for much of the rest of January. River levels now are dropping.

“We’ve gotten so much water and so much snow,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “It’s going to help us dry out and dig out heading into late January. It’s really good news because it takes off the trajectory toward worsening flooding.”

For a sense of how much worse it has been, consider the winter of 1861-62.

Between November 1861 and January 1862, it rained so much that the Central Valley became a vast inland sea, 30 feet deep, for 300 miles. Leland Stanford, who had been elected governor, took a rowboat through the streets of Sacramento to reach his inauguration.

Warm storms on a massive snowpack that winter caused immense flooding, wiping farms, mills, bridges and in some case whole towns off the map. An estimated 4,000 people died, roughly 1% of California’s population at the time, and more than the death toll in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

Now, California has large dams and reservoirs that limit flooding in wet years. There also are thousands of miles of levees and pumps, weirs and other flood control projects that were not in place in the 1860s.

And despite the recent wet weeks, Northern California is nowhere near the final yearly rainfall total of 1861-62. San Francisco on Tuesday had 21.75 inches of rain since Oct. 1. That total would have to more than double in the coming months to reach the 49.27 inches that fell in 1861-62, or the 47.19 inches that fell in the second-wettest year in history, 1997-98.

Weather experts have become increasingly concerned that if another massive winter like 1861-62 hit — and tree rings and other historical records show they have occurred roughly every 100 to 200 years — millions of people could be trapped by floods, freeways could be shut for weeks, and the damage could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

A study last summer by scientists at UCLA found that the chances of such a series of huge storms, while still remote, have roughly doubled due to climate change. Climate change has warmed ocean waters, allowing more moisture to be absorbed in atmospheric river storms.

Swain, a co-author of that study, said that climate change is already increasing the amount of moisture in such storms by about 5%, and that will climb as temperatures continue to warm.

Very wet winters are nothing new in California. Since July 1, San Francisco has had the fifth most rainfall on record. But all four of the wetter periods were in the 1800s.

“California has always had big storms like this,” said Park Williams, an associate professor of geography at UCLA, whose research has shown that droughts and wildfires are becoming more severe due to warming. “Climate change can make them more intense. But we might have had a year this wet whether or not we had climate change. And 1862 proves that.”

With dry weather forecast for most of the next week, here’s a tally of the storms’ stunning impact, so far, by the numbers:

9: Number of atmospheric river storms to hit California in the past three weeks.

20: Number of confirmed fatalities, as of Monday, from California storms since Christmas.12: Number of confirmed fatalities in California wildfires in 2021 and 2022.

41: Number of California’s 58 counties under federal emergency declaration.3: Number under major disaster declaration (Santa Cruz, Merced, Sacramento).

24.5 trillion: Estimated gallons of water that fell on California from Dec. 26 to Jan. 11.16: Number of times that amount of water could fill California’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake.

17: Inches of rain measured in downtown San Francisco since Dec. 26.3: Historical average in inches of rain that falls in downtown San Francisco over same time.

3: Number of times the San Lorenzo River hit major flood stage since Dec. 27, prompting evacuations and flooding neighborhoods.

40: Size of the hole, in feet, torn in the historic Capitola Wharf during the storms.

62: Miles of Highway 1 in Big Sur that remained closed Monday due to landslides.

1.19 million: Gallons of water flowing every second through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta on Friday.1.12 million: Gallons flowing every second down the Columbia River, the largest river on the West Coast, on Friday.54,712: Gallons flowing every second through the Delta on Dec. 1.

27: Feet of snow that have fallen at the UC snow lab at Donner Summit since Nov. 1.12: Feet of snow that fell on average from 1991-2020 at the lab over the same time.

247: Percent of historic average for statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack, on Monday.106: Percent of historic average for statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack on Dec. 1.

1,046: Bay Area lightning strikes on Jan. 14-15, including one that hit the Golden Gate Bridge.

500+: Number of landslides statewide caused by storms, since New Year’s Eve, according to the California Geological Survey.

34 million: Number of Californians — 90% of state population — under flood watch Monday Jan. 9.

143: Percent of normal rainfall since Oct. 1 in San Jose through Monday afternoon.196: Percent in San Francisco.219: Percent in Los Angeles.229: Percent in Oakland.424: Percent in Bishop in the Eastern Sierra.

100: Percent full for all seven reservoirs operated by Marin Municipal Water District.86: Percent full for all seven reservoirs operated by East Bay MUD.56: Percent full for all 10 reservoirs operated by the Santa Clara Valley Water District (Anderson, the largest, had to be drained for earthquake repairs).

33: Percent full for Lexington Reservoir near Los Gatos on Dec. 1.100: Percent full for Lexington Reservoir on Monday.

46: Percent on Thursday of California in “severe drought,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.85: Percent on Dec. 1 of California in “severe drought.”

0: Number of major storms forecast for the next week.

But 94% of the water that has flowed since New Year’s Eve through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a linchpin of California’s water system, has continued straight to the Pacific Ocean instead of being captured and stored in the state’s reservoirs.

Environmental regulations aimed at protecting a two-inch-long fish, the endangered Delta smelt, have required the massive state and federal pumps near Tracy to reduce pumping rates by nearly half of their full limit, sharply curbing the amount of water that can be saved for farms and cities to the south.

The move has angered Central Valley politicians of both parties along with agricultural leaders, who have been arguing for many months that someone must help farmers suffering terribly during the drought. Now they are frustrated that the state Department of Water Resources and the federal Bureau of Reclamation aren’t capturing more water amid the record rainfall.

“It’s like winning the lottery and blowing it all in Vegas,” said Jim Houston, administrator of the California Farm Bureau Federation. “You have nothing to show for it at the end of the day.”

The rules were put in place by the Trump administration in 2019 and reinforced by the Newsom administration in 2020. They also are affecting urban water supplies.

The Contra Costa Water District, which relies on Delta water, has been able to add almost no water to its largest reservoir, Los Vaqueros, in the past two weeks. Its level has gone from 48% full to 50% full. And less water has flowed into San Luis Reservoir, east of Gilroy, a major supply for the Santa Clara County Valley Water District, the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles, and others, than otherwise would have. San Luis Reservoir has gone from 34% full on Jan. 1 to 42% full on Thursday.

“This happens every time we have high flows in the winter,” said Cindy Kao, imported water manager for the Santa Clara Valley Water District in San Jose, which provides water to 2 million people in Silicon Valley. “We are able to capture very little of it because of regulations to protect species.”

Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, said Friday that the state and federal governments do not have much flexibility under the law. She said the current pumping restrictions began Jan. 3 and are scheduled to end Monday.

She said the restrictions have reduced pumping by about 45,000 acre feet over the two weeks. That’s enough water for about 225,000 people a year or enough to fill Crystal Springs Reservoir south of San Francisco 80% full.

“We share the urgency to move as much water as we can during these storms,” Nemeth said. “No question. But we also have species that are hammered by the same drought conditions. And those protections are important so we can operate the system in a balanced way.”

Under the federal Endangered Species Act signed in 1973 by Richard Nixon and the state Endangered Species Act signed in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, it is illegal to kill fish or wildlife at risk of extinction.

The Delta, a vast area of marshes and sloughs between Sacramento and San Francisco Bay that is roughly the size of Yosemite National Park, is where some of California’s biggest political battles over endangered species have been fought in recent decades.

The Delta is the meeting point for the state’s two largest rivers, the Sacramento, which flows south, and the San Joaquin, which flows north. That water mixes and runs westward, eventually flowing into San Francisco Bay and out through the Golden Gate to the Pacific Ocean.

In the 1950s, the federal government built huge pumps near Tracy to send water south to farmers and cities through the Central Valley Project. In the 1960s, former California Gov. Pat Brown built even bigger pumps two miles west, near Byron, that pumps Delta water into the State Water Project, which serves 27 million people.

The pumps are enormous and over time have disrupted fish and wildlife in the Delta, including smelt and salmon, sometimes grinding them up, sometimes making sloughs run backward, and other times removing up to half the Delta’s fresh water. Once plentiful, smelt and salmon numbers crashed. This winter, only five smelt have been found in the Delta by scientists.

After Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon were listed as endangered in 1989 and Delta smelt were listed in 1993, state and federal wildlife agencies began limiting how and when the big pumps could operate. That sparked relentless lawsuits from environmental groups, farmers and urban water agencies that continue to this day.

The key rule that has limited pumping the last two weeks is called the “first flush” rule. It requires that the pumps be ratcheted down after the first big rain every winter so that migrating smelt can move westward away from the pumps. The rule was included in the Trump administration’s Delta permits in 2019, called biological opinions, and in the Newsom administration’s state rules in 2020, known as an incidental take permit.

Environmentalists say the fish are “canaries in the coal mine” that indicate the health of the Delta, the West Coast’s largest estuary. The solution, they say, is for farms and cities to use water more efficiently and develop local sources so they take less from the Delta.

“The notion that we should just let some species go extinct because they get in the way of corporate agribusiness profits, I don’t think that’s what Californians want,” said Doug Obegi, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, who noted that other reservoirs around the state are filling from the rains. “No one should have the right to kill the last Delta smelt, the last chinook salmon or the last bald eagle.”

But political leaders are angry and asking for relief.

“This is no time to be dialing back the pumps,” wrote State Sen. Melissa Hurtado and Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, both Democrats from Bakersfield, in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday. “After several years of drought and low reservoir levels, it only makes sense to capitalize on wet conditions”

Five Republican congressmen, led by Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, wrote to Newsom and President Biden this week. “We have a moral obligation to provide Californians any relief that is within our control,” they said. “Government regulations should not and must not deny our constituents critical water from these storms.”

An immense amount of water was moving through the Delta on Friday. The flow rate was so high that it surpassed the volume raging down the mighty Columbia River near Portland, Oregon.

At that rate, about 159,000 cubic feet per second, the Delta was carrying enough water — 316,500 acre feet a day or 1.2 million gallons every second — to fill an empty reservoir the size of Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite National Park to the top every 27 hours.

When the state and federal pumps are fully running, they can move roughly 10,800 cubic feet per second. That means they are unable to catch most of the current deluge even if maxed out. But since Jan. 1, they have averaged just 6,415 cfs per day — far less than their capacity.

Nemeth said the issue shows the need for Newsom’s $16 billion Delta tunnel project that is designed to catch more water during big storms. She said it also shows the need to construct more reservoirs to capture wet winter flows.

If rain and snow continue this winter, the current reduced pumping won’t make much difference, experts say. But if the rain stops, as it did last year, these past two weeks will loom larger.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors, who said the rules need to be rewritten to allow more flexibility as climate change makes droughts and storms more volatile. “The jury’s still out. In May we’ll know if it was a big deal or not.”

For the first time in more than two years, the majority of California is no longer in a severe drought, the federal government reported Thursday, a dramatic turnaround following a series of powerful atmospheric river storms since Christmas.

Overall, 46% of California’s land area remains in severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report put out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Only a month ago, on Dec. 6, it was 85%.

“Intense precipitation in California the past few weeks particularly late December and early January has significantly reduced drought intensity in California,” wrote Richard Tinker, a meteorologist with the NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

This week marked the most improvement in California’s drought since Nov. 17, 2020, when 41% of the state’s land area was in severe drought. The last time none of the state was classified as being in severe drought was nearly three years ago, on March 10, 2020, after a disappointing winter rain and snow season that year began a three-year arid stretch.

The wet conditions could be the end of a difficult saga that has fallowed farm fields, caused millions of residents to live under water restrictions, and harmed fish and wildlife. But state officials say they need to see more rain before declaring the drought over.

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency on April 12, 2021, for Mendocino and Sonoma counties, where reservoirs had fallen to parched levels and water shortages were emerging. He expanded the designation to 41 counties the following month and statewide by October 2021, urging California residents to cut water use 15%. The declaration also offered various forms of assistance to local communities, including help expanding wells and upgrading failing water systems in rural areas.

Newsom never ordered mandatory city-by-city water conservation targets with fines for communities that fail to meet them, as former Gov. Jerry Brown did during the 2012-2017 drought. But last year Newsom did require all major water providers in the state to impose their “stage 2” drought rules, which limited the number of days people could water lawns and set other restrictions that varied depending on local city rules.

When Newsom made the first drought declaration nearly two years ago, 85% of California was in severe drought, according to the Drought Monitor — almost double the level now.

Since late December, the weather, and California’s drought outlook, has shifted dramatically. California has been hammered by seven atmospheric river storms since Christmas. They have caused flooding in coastal areas and the Sacramento Valley and sent the Sierra snowpack to 226% of its historic average.

Every week, the Drought Monitor report uses soil moisture, rainfall totals, snow, reservoir levels and other factors to rank parts of the United States in drought severity on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being moderate drought, 2 being severe drought, 3 being extreme drought and 4 being exceptional drought.

In recent weeks, coastal areas and the Sierra Nevada have received so much precipitation that they have improved to the lowest drought category, moderate drought. That includes most of the Bay Area, which was in severe drought just a month ago.

The heavy rains have filled smaller reservoirs in many communities. All seven of the Marin Municipal Water District’s reservoirs reached 100% capacity this week, as did four of the 10 owned by the Santa Clara Valley Water District, while the seven run by the East Bay Municipal Utility District are 84% full. Hetch Hetchy, the main reservoir on San Francisco’s water system, was 79% full on Wednesday, or 120% of its historical average.

State and federal officials have welcomed the rain and snow. But they have cautioned in recent days that the drought is not over yet, because the largest reservoirs in California, which fell to dangerously low levels last summer, are not yet full.

The largest, Shasta Lake, near Redding, was 44% full on Wednesday, 77% of its historical average for that date, and slowly but steadily rising. The second largest, Oroville, in Butte County, was 49% full, or 90% of the historical average, having risen 97 feet since Dec. 1.

Last year a very wet December raised hopes the drought was ending, only to be followed by the driest January, February and March in recorded California history, leaving the Sierra snowpack at just 37% at the end of last winter’s rain and snow season on April 1.

State and federal water managers said this week that before declaring an end to the drought, they need to see how much the reservoirs continue to fill around the state, whether the storms shut off and how local water supplies, including depleted groundwater, improve and how the snowpack continues to change.

“We will be reassessing in the later part of January what this means relative to overall drought,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the state Department of Water Resources, on Monday.

She hinted that if conditions continue to improve, Newsom may lift the drought emergency regionally rather than statewide all at once.

“By and large, most of our reservoirs continue to be below average,” Nemeth said. “The governor declared a drought emergency a couple of years ago. He did so in certain parts of the state, and as the drought deepened and spread throughout California, that drought emergency was extended. Typically when we move out of drought emergency we follow the same format. There’s a lot of variability across California, in terms of not just hydrologic conditions but water supply availability.”

Tinker, in writing the weekly Drought Report, cited some of the stunning weather changes over the past week in California.

He noted that on Monday, Bishop, in the Eastern Sierra, reported 3.02 inches of rain, which was the fourth wettest day in at least 71 years there. The town’s winter rainfall total of 6.8 inches is more than 4 times above normal.

Since Dec. 1, downtown Sacramento reported 14.25 inches of precipitation, three times the historical average of 4.76 inches. The 16.10 inches of rain that fell on Oakland since Dec. 1 is also triple the historical average. And farther south, Santa Maria in Santa Barbara County reported 10.61 inches of rain since Dec. 1, compared to a normal of 2.96 inches.

Six atmospheric river storms since the end of December have dumped half a year’s worth of rain on San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and other Northern California cities in two weeks. The ferocious weather has saturated soils and bolstered runoff while also smothering the Sierra Nevada in snow, leaving the statewide snowpack Wednesday at a breathtaking 226% of its historical average and setting up reservoirs to receive more water when it melts later this spring.

“There’s no getting around it. This is great for reservoir storage,” said Jeffrey Mount, a professor emeritus at UC Davis and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s water center. “It will clearly help the drought. We are likely to have full reservoirs this spring because there’s such a huge snowpack.”

Since Dec. 1, California’s 154 largest reservoirs have gone from 67% of their historical average capacity to 84%, adding roughly 4.7 million acre feet of water in six weeks — or enough for the annual consumption of 23 million people.

Shasta, the state’s largest reservoir at 35 miles long, has risen 37 feet since Dec. 1. The second largest, Oroville, in Butte County, has risen 97 feet, barely a year after state officials shut off the hydroelectric turbines in its dam for the first time in its 50-year history because of extremely low water levels.

“We’re all ecstatic,” said Lesley Nickelson, owner of Oroville Cycle, a store that sells boating and motorcycle equipment a few miles from Oroville Dam. “The marina has been way down at the bottom of a dirt hill for the past few years. People haven’t been going out on the lake. Now the boat ramps are underwater again. People are going back.”

The turnaround in some areas is stunning. On Monday, Lake Cachuma, the largest reservoir in Santa Barbara County, was 37% full. By Wednesday, following a pounding atmospheric river storm, it was 80% full.

Some reservoirs, such as Folsom northeast of Sacramento or Millerton, near Fresno, have risen so fast that their operators are releasing water to free up space and reduce flood risk for homes and businesses downstream.

“When there is storm after storm, we’re trying to make sure we are ready and prepared,” said Kristin White, Central Valley Operations director for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Folsom and Millerton.

To be sure, many of California’s biggest reservoirs are steadily rising but are still a long way from being full. On Wednesday, Shasta, near Redding, was 42% full, up from 31% on Dec. 1 but still only 70% of its historic average for the date. Oroville was 47% full Wednesday, up from 27% on Dec. 1 and now at 88% of its historical average.

Last year, a very wet December gave way to the driest January, February and March in a century, drawing the state back into drought after raising people’s hopes.

“We are certainly tracking better than last year,” said Molly White, operations manager of the State Water Project. “So far so good. This winter is on a good trajectory. We’ll see what happens in the next few months.”

State and federal officials caution that unseasonably hot weather in the coming months could melt much of the snowpack, or strong high pressure ridges could block new storms.

“Last year the spigot turned off,” White said. “We need to be patient to see how the winter unfolds.”

This week, many smaller local reservoirs already had filled completely.

In Marin County, all seven reservoirs operated by the Marin Municipal Water District were 100% full for the first time in four years. Loch Lomond Reservoir near Ben Lomond in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which provides water for nearly 100,000 people in Santa Cruz, began spilling Sunday.

The seven reservoirs operated by the East Bay Municipal Utility District were 84% full Wednesday and rising. All three agencies said they do not expect to impose water restrictions or fines this summer.

“This is a relief. We have been waiting for these kind of storms for years now,” said Nelsy Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for East Bay MUD, which serves 1.4 million people in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. “It’s fantastic news after the last few years of non-stop bad news.”

In Silicon Valley, four of the 10 reservoirs operated by the Santa Clara Valley Water District are at or near 100% full — Almaden, Coyote, Chesbro and Uvas. But the district’s entire system is only 51% full because its largest reservoir, Anderson, near Morgan Hill, was ordered drained in 2020 by federal dam safety officials to complete a $1.2 billion earthquake safety project.

“We’re seeing a big boost to the reservoirs,” said Matt Keller, a district spokesman. “But the fact that Anderson is down is a real issue obviously for our local water supply. We are relying a lot on groundwater and imported water.”

As the climate continues to warm, scientists say more severe dry periods, followed by intense wet years, are becoming the norm. Eight of the past 11 years in California have been drought years. A study last year from Columbia University found that the last 22 years were the driest 22-year period in the American West in 2,000 years.

California must do a better job of capturing water in wet years to reduce the impacts of dry years on cities, farms, fish and wildlife, experts say.

“We have shifted into a pattern where we have to be much more careful about our use of water,” Mount said. “We need to do more to sock away water in the wet years.”

The state should build more stormwater capture projects, as Los Angeles is doing, fund more projects to flood fields and orchards to recharge groundwater, and construct more off-stream reservoirs, Mount said.

Tim Quinn, a former water fellow at Stanford University who also ran the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, agreed.

“We need to build it into our minds that we live in a state that is in a continual state of drought, punctuated by occasional very wet periods,” Quinn said. “How do we take advantage of the wet years?”

State and local officials on Tuesday began cleaning up from the half-dozen atmospheric rivers that have pummeled California since late December, killing at least 17 people and leaving 96,000 people under evacuation warnings or orders amid the risk of flooding and mudslides. Their work came amid a brief respite from the rain and the wind but with more strong storms expected to arrive later in the week.

Although none of the coming storms are forecast to be as big as the “bomb cyclone” that hit last week, residents have been warned to stay vigilant. While touring the storm and tide-ravaged community of Capitola on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom cautioned that even a little rain could cause outsized effects due to heavily-saturated soils.

“The magnitude of this is not isolated to smaller communities, it is scaled across the largest state in our union,” Newsom said. “We’re soaked. This place is soaked. And now just more modest amount of precipitation could have as equal or greater impact in terms of the conditions on the ground.”

On Tuesday, nearly every corner of the state had felt the impacts of the recent atmospheric onslaught that caused flooding and myriad downed trees in Northern California, mudslides and a major evacuation in the Southern California community of Montecito and heavy snow across the length of the Sierra Nevada.

California Storms video: Hail in the Bay Area, rockslides, sinkholes and more

On the Central Coast, where some of the storm’s worst effects were felt, a 5-year-old boy died Monday after being swept away in a San Luis Obispo County creek, authorities said. A woman also drowned the same day after driving onto a mile-long section of Central Coast roadway that had been closed due to flooding, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Visiting the Santa Cruz coast, Newsom vowed to provide assistance to Capitola, where huge waves stoked from a “bomb cyclone” last week tore out a section of the historic Capitola Wharf and smashed and flooded a half-dozen beachfront Capitola Village restaurants.

“We’re not walking away,” Newsom said, standing on the town’s waterfront where generations of Bay Area residents have gone to frolic on the sand, dine and drink on seaside patios. From Dec. 31 through Sunday, heavy rains and a devastating tidal event caused at least $28 million in damages to public property across unincorporated Santa Cruz County, said Jason Hoppin, spokesman for Santa Cruz County. In addition, five buildings were red-tagged, and another 131 were deemed significantly damaged but repairable.

That doesn’t include any damage sustained Monday when the San Lorenzo River flooded its banks and sent water rushing into numerous buildings. Nor does it include a line of gusty storms to tear through the county early Tuesday morning, which prompted dozens of 911 calls from people reporting trees falling onto their houses..

Newsom gave no specifics regarding state aid to businesses Wednesday, nor details about funding for rebuilding the wharf. He also did not reveal whether the Seacliff Wharf — a state facility just down the coast that once led to a now-damaged cement-filled ship — would be repaired after damage from the storm. “All that will be determined,” Newsom said.

Around the Bay Area, the true extent of the recent storms began coming into focus Tuesday, even as thunderstorms dropped pea-sized hail and yet more rain.

In Santa Clara County, at least $24 million in damages to public property had been tallied by city and county officials through midday Tuesday — a figure that was expected to evolve as more assessments were completed, a county official said. Much of that tally included damage to roadways — more than a dozen of which remained closed midday Tuesday.

The heavy rains also caused dozens of sewage spills around the Bay Area and other parts of the state as sewage systems became overwhelmed by huge amounts of water pouring into the ground and seeping into pipes. Since New Year’s Eve, for example, at least 22 million gallons of “unauthorized discharges” occurred in the Bay Area, said Eileen White, executive officer for the San Francisco Bay Water Quality Control Board.

About 150 calls a day have streamed into the dispatch center for Bay Area Tree Specialists of late, said Michelle Reulman, the business’ office manager.

“This is a state of emergency,” said John Gill, owner of Majestic Tree Service, just moments after helping to clear a tree that fell on three vehicles and a house Wednesday off Bascom Avenue in San Jose. “You drive every five minutes, and there’s a tree down on a house or the street or the road or it’s flooded.”

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, a falling eucalyptus tree topped a 137-foot tall transmission tower in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood. The weight of the tower brought down three distribution poles as well as power lines and some transformers, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokesperson Mayra Tostado said in an update posted to Twitter. As a result, about 2,100 customers lost power.

“We’ve brought in additional resources to be able to restore power as quickly as possible to our customers,” Tostado said. “We understand how disruptive it has been to be without power and we’re doing everything we can to turn the lights back on as quickly as possible.”

Tostado said the region saw winds up to 70 mph and 100 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes.

The South Bay took a big punch from Mother Nature today. @PGE4Me responded to an outage in San Jose’s Willow Glen due to a eucalyptus tree knocking down a 137-ft. tall transmission tower. With its weight, it pulled down power lines and poles connected to it. Here’s my report. pic.twitter.com/HJUJm9tqDA

— Mayra Tostado (@PGE_Mayra) January 11, 2023

Many of the trees were felled during an onslaught of thunderstorms Tuesday that knocked out power to tens of thousands of people across the Bay Area, while dropping between .25 and 1.25 inches of rain across most of the South Bay, the East Bay and the Peninsula. Much of the Santa Cruz mountains received between .66 and 1.4 inches of rain overnight, pushing three-day storm totals to between 6 and 8 inches of rain across much of the area.

As of 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, 24-hour precipitation totals around the Bay Area included 1.21 inches in San Francisco, 1.18 inches in Oakland, 1.11 inches in Concord,.41 inches in San Jose and .40 inches in Livermore, according to the weather service.

More than 40,000 PG&E customers were without power as of 5 p.m. Tuesday — the majority of them in the South Bay where more than 27,000 customers remained without electricity, according to the utility provider.

To the east across the Sierra Nevada, a remarkable run of snowfall continued to push the state’s snowpack higher — reaching 215% of its average for this date across the state, according to the California Department of Water Resources. The southern Sierra already has received more than it normally gets by April 1, while the northern Sierra is about 75% of the way to that mark.

Another .1 to .25 inches of rain is expected to fall over much of the Bay Area on Wednesday, with higher amounts forecasted to hit the North Bay and the Santa Cruz Mountains, according to the National Weather Service. Some brief showers may hit the region on Thursday or Friday, but the area should remain mostly dry under cloudy skies those days.

Many residents found themselves whiplashed from the see-sawing weather. In Soquel, near Santa Cruz, Roman Bodnarchuk wondered aloud at the next curveball from Mother Nature after a dramatic two weeks of joy and catastrophe.

Just after Christmas, he had finally succeeded in getting his war-refugee parents out of Ukraine — where they lived near a power station under frequent Russian bombardment — and to his rented house by Soquel Creek.

“It’s very stressful,” said Bodnarchuk, 30. “You can imagine how frustrating it was to leave the house when my mom is sick and having to deal with all these situations. Hopefully the house withstands all this damage.”

He couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread at viewing forecasts for additional rain in the coming week

“We’re very worried,” Bodnarchuk said. “It’s been difficult enough already.”

Rick Hurd, Julia Prodis Sulek, Jason Green and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The San Lorenzo River at Big Trees, near Henry Cowell State Park, rose to 24.51 feet by 7:30 a.m. — 8 feet over its flood stage and the second-highest level recorded since modern records began in 1937.

Only during legendary floods in January 1982, when the river hit 28.8 feet and 10 people were killed in a mudslide at Love Creek near Ben Lomond, has the river run higher. More rain was forecast Tuesday and this weekend.

“In this drought era, a lot of folks in California may have forgotten just how significant the storms can get at times — how much water can fall from the sky over a relatively short period of time,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.

The National Weather Service issued a flood watch until Tuesday afternoon covering the Bay Area, Monterey Bay region and Sacramento Valley.

State officials said that storms since Dec. 31 have steadily boosted reservoir levels. Due to three years of severe drought, many of the largest, such as Shasta and Oroville, are rising but still remained at below-average levels, which was helping reduce flood risk.

“We have a lot of room to absorb these storms that are coming in,” said John Yarbrough, assistant deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources.

But the storms, blamed for 12 deaths around the state since New Year’s Eve, found a bull’s eye early Monday morning on the Monterey Bay Area.

With water just inches from the bottom of two bridges in Felton, including the historic 1892-era Covered Bridge, Santa Cruz County officials ordered the Felton Grove neighborhood and the Paradise Park area down river near Santa Cruz evacuated.

Sonia Rojas, who works at the Wild Roots natural foods store along the river bank, watched massive logs sail downstream from the Graham Hill Road bridge near the store before it opened.

“I’ve been working here for seven years and never seen it like that,” said Rojas, 44.

Scotts Valley Water District General Manager David McNair stood alongside Rojas, unable to get to work after flooding submerged the Mount Hermon Road intersection between Felton and Scotts Valley.

“There’s literally no way out of the valley right now,” McNair said. “We got so much rain last night it was astonishing.”

VIDEO: Rescues on Highway 101, Flooding across the Bay Area

It came as flood waters from Uvas Creek spilled their banks, flooding houses on the 4000 block of Monterey Road, near Highway 101. The occupants of the houses had already left their residences by the time emergency crews arrived, according to Josh Shifrin, a Cal Fire battalion chief in Santa Clara County.

For the 24 hours ending at 5 p.m. Monday, Boulder Creek and Ben Lomond, the watershed for the San Lorenzo River, received more than 4 inches of rain. Over the past week, the area has received 11 inches. When all that water pours through the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it emerges in Felton before flowing through downtown Santa Cruz, which is protected by levees, to the Pacific Ocean.

Smaller but significant rainfall amounts also fell across the rest of the region. San Francisco received 1.44 inches, Oakland 1.8 inches and downtown San Jose .95 inches in the 24 hours ending at 5 p.m. Monday. Higher elevations took the brunt of the storm, with Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County receiving 2 inches, Middle Peak in Marin County getting 3.01 inches, and Mining Ridge in Big Sur receiving a staggering 12.25 inches.

The San Lorenzo River at Third and Riverside in Santa Cruz. Tons of debris. Likely going higher. pic.twitter.com/Xyj0itNjEi

— Jim Cantore (@JimCantore) January 9, 2023

Along the Pajaro River in Watsonville, Maria Corbera, 60, left her tent at a homeless encampment on the far side of the river at 2 a.m. Monday. Before dawn, as flood waters were rising, she went back for her cat “Baby,” wading through chest-deep water.

“My house is in the water, but I saved my cat,” she said. “I just care about my kitty.”

Across the Bay Area, where hillsides were saturated, nervous water managers, public safety officials and residents watched rivers rise.

The Guadalupe River in San Jose nearly hit its flood stage Monday morning but did not have significant flooding. Similarly, the Russian River at Guerneville was forecast to hit 33 feet by early Tuesday morning, 1 foot above flood stage but far short of the all-time record 49 feet.

On the edge of downtown San Jose, the Guadalupe spilled into an overflow channel designed to prevent the area from the flooding.

“The whole system is working good right now,” said Steve Holmes, executive director of the South Bay Clean Creeks Coalition, who stood on St. John Street observing the roiling brown waters.

Watching the brimming Guadalupe River near the historic Henry’s Hi-Life bar on the edge of downtown San Jose, Mike Wright, 69, recalled the devastating flooding in 1995. At the time, he was drinking beer at another bar nearby at Julian and Montgomery, Greg’s Ballroom.

“The water came up to the threshold,” he said. “So what do you do? You order another pitcher.”

Emergency officials were carefully monitoring burn scars and mudslide risk statewide. In Montecito, near Santa Barbara, the sheriff evacuated 10,000 people, five years after a mudslide killed 23 people and destroyed more than 100 homes in 2017.

The Sierra Nevada was expected to get at least 3 feet of new snow by Tuesday. Flood concerns also were rising in the Sacramento Valley, where the Sacramento River spilled over protective weirs into bypass channels. State officials said they had distributed 180,000 sandbags to flood-prone communities and were helping shore up levees on the Pajaro River in Watsonville, Bear Creek in Merced County and the Cosumnes River in Sacramento County.

Sunday night, President Biden approved an emergency declaration for California at the request of Gov. Gavin Newsom, which directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide resources and coordinate disaster relief efforts.

Monday was not a good day to be driving. Near Gilroy, Uvas Creek sent flood waters knee deep across the four lanes of Highway 101, stranding several cars and blocking traffic by noon.

“It’s like the Philippines right here, bro,” said Richard Barcellano, whose Lexus ISF sports car needed a push out of the water. “TikTok this!”

Along the coast, businesses owners continued to mop up in Capitola Village after record waves smashed a 40-foot hole in Capitola Wharf late last week and flooded waterfront restaurants.

In the nearby town of Soquel, Ashley and Derek Harper evacuated their creekside home and the houses of their neighbors on Wharf Road, with their baby Lydia, for the second time since New Year’s Eve when the town’s main street was left underwater.

By 9 a.m. Monday, the Harpers’ ground-floor studio, workshop and garage were filled with two feet of muddy water from Soquel Creek. A sheriff’s deputy had come knocking around 5 a.m. telling them to leave.

“About 45 minutes later, the water was at the front step,” said Derek Harper, 45, a solar services technician. “We had bags packed already.”

In Paradise Park, a community in redwood forest just north of Santa Cruz, the San Lorenzo River pounded a section of road into rubble, flooded at least a dozen homes and swept a tree trunk into the historic covered bridge, built in 1872, shearing off one of two posts holding the span up above the river.

Retired UC Santa Cruz librarian Joanne Nelson said her riverfront house was flooded on the bottom level, with floodwater washing away the sandbags she’d put in front of the downstairs bedroom and breaking the door. “It invited itself in, big time,” said Nelson, 80.

Mudslides closed portions of Highway 9, snarled traffic on Highway 17 and closed parts of Highway 37 in Marin County. Caltrans closed Highway 84 in Niles Canyon east of Fremont, and Highway 1 in Big Sur from Ragged Point in San Luis Obispo County, to Palo Colorado in the north. And more rain is on the way Tuesday and this weekend.

“We see a couple more on the horizon, so we will be in this state for quite a bit,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the state Department of Water Resources.

Staff writer Jason Green contributed to this report.

The town’s 855-foot-long wooden wharf, a popular spot for fishing and sightseeing, was cleaved in half from pounding waves the day before that smashed wooden pilings and decking. Well-known waterfront restaurants sat behind emergency fencing in various states of damage from storm surges that broke through windows and undermined building foundations.

Most of the village, just 13 feet above sea level, remained without power all day Friday.

“The damage throughout Capitola and the village is absolutely devastating,” said Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend. “You’ve got iconic locations that were significantly damaged, locally owned businesses that are red-tagged, and a wharf that will take millions to rebuild to its previous state.

“The rebuilding process and healing the emotional scars will take a long time.”

Adding to the grief: City officials had been planning in recent years a $7 million project to shore up and strengthen the Capitola Wharf by widening it, installing fiberglass pilings and taking other steps to harden it against major storms, particularly in an era of rising seas amid climate change.

They had delayed work several times seeking additional federal funding. But the ocean didn’t wait.

In a bitter irony, on Friday, U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Monterey, announced that after two years of trying, he had secured the city’s request of $3.5 million to fully fund the job when President Biden signed a federal spending bill on Dec. 29.

Panetta said Friday that the money can be used to help repair the beloved wharf.

“These are special places, and they deserve the type of attention we need to give them to rebuild,” he said.

Crews continued to remove mud, sand and debris from the village and from around the colorful Venetian apartments across Soquel Creek, many of which also suffered damage from water and debris. City officials were worried about another powerful storm expected to hit Sunday night.

Debris could pile up at the creek’s mouth, flooding the village, Capitola Police Chief Andrew Dally said.

“Each new event creates its own challenges,” he said.

Three miles down the coast, destruction more serious than previously thought was coming to light at Seacliff State Beach, another popular attraction for thousands of visitors a year.

All 60 of the oceanfront campsites, so popular they are booked nearly solid 365 days a year, were badly damaged, said Chris Spohrer, superintendent of state parks’ Santa Cruz District.

“Many of them were completely destroyed,” Spohrer said. “The picnic tables. The hookups. The asphalt. The restrooms were severely damaged. We saw inundation. Doors were broken off with driftwood. The tide came all the way up to the base of the cliff. It destroyed a good portion of the seawall.”

The visitor center and museum was unharmed, he said. Half of the park’s wooden pier fell into the ocean, and the 1920s era “cement ship,” wrecked by storms in 2017 and before, was further battered. The road into New Brighton State Beach nearby also was damaged, Spohrer added. Both parks remained closed until at least next week.

Dozens of homes in the Rio Del Mar area also suffered flood damage, authorities said.

The Capitola waterfront, well-known to weekend visitors from the Bay Area who pack beaches on warm days, endured its worst storm damage since January of 1982 and 1983 when gales tore a similar hole in the wharf and sent mud and debris through the streets.

Three of the eight restaurants on Capitola Village’s oceanfront were red-tagged Friday with severe damage and no entry permitted — Zelda’s, The Sand Bar and Paradise Beach Grille. Five were yellow-tagged, with city officials allowing limited entry for the proprietors of Tacos Moreno, My Thai Beach, Pizza My Heart, Margaritaville and Capitola Bar & Grill.

Restaurant owners had one over-riding concern: “Getting back to work when the city lets us,” said Josh Whitby, co-owner of Zelda’s, where debris including a beam from the wharf broke through the beach-facing windows and a wall, flooding the interior.

Capitola Bar & Grill, which sits on concrete unlike most of the other beachfront establishments built on pilings over the water, escaped damage, but city officials told owners Michelle and LaSalle Strong that the city’s sewer system was damaged, potentially affecting their re-opening.

“We’re losing income every day,” Michelle Strong said. “Our staff are losing income every day.”

Capitola City Manager Jamie Goldstein said that he didn’t yet have a damage estimate, but the city was working on compiling one.

Asked about decisions the city council made in 2021 and again this past July to delay some renovation work on the wharf to seek more funding for a more expansive project, Goldstein noted that the city replaced corroding steel pilings in December 2021 at the end of the wharf. This week’s storm was so powerful that the broader job planned — new wooden decking, new fiberglass pilings, a wider wharf and restrooms — could well have been damaged also, he said, particularly if the construction, estimated to take nine months, had been underway during the storm.

“Anyone can armchair quarterback,” he said. “Whether or not we were lucky or unlikely we did it that way, I don’t know. But it’s where we are.”

He said the town, which suffered similar damage in 1983, 1982, 1955 and 1913, will bounce back.

“I think it’s going to surprise us all,” Goldstein said. “I think we are going to get it done faster than anyone expects. Capitola has pulled through before.”

In the nearby beach town of Rio del Mar, waves carrying logs and debris crashed over a sea wall and bashed into a string of beachfront homes. Roiling waves swallowed up more of the landmark cement ship and the pier leading to it, chronic victims of past storms. And at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk just up the coast, the raging San Lorenzo River that spills into the Pacific exposed the base of the Logger’s Revenge flume ride, washing away boulders that had protected it.

In Capitola, the gaping hole in the 855-foot pier completely cut off from shore the popular Wharf House restaurant perched at the end of it. Its fate remained perilous Thursday as powerful waves blasted fountains of whitewater between the timbers holding it up.

“They’re just such iconic places for all of us,” said Scott Cheney, who ventured out from his Seacliff home Thursday morning to survey the damage along the coast. “It’s sad to see them ruined and wonder if they’ll ever be rebuilt.”

The damage was wrought by near record-breaking waves that pounded the coast Thursday morning, coinciding with fierce onshore winds and a high 5.7 foot tide. The waves, many measuring a stunning 25 feet from crest to trough, were created by sea swells produced hundreds of miles out to sea by storm winds.

“They’re some of the largest waves I’ve ever seen to break along our shoreline,” said UC Santa Cruz oceanography professor Gary Griggs, who has been studying the coastal region for 55 years.

The winds are so strong and the swell is so large, he said, that the waves are pushing up against the bluffs.

“As sea level gets higher, the waves hit the base of those cliffs and bluffs more often, and with more energy,” he said.

All of Capitola Village’s waterfront restaurants, including local landmark Zelda’s, were inundated by the raging ocean, Capitola police Capt. Sarah Ryan said.

At The Sand Bar, waves were still pounding into the restaurant and pushing up the floorboards when owners Minna and Jeff Lantis arrived Thursday.

“The floor literally went up like you’re on a trampoline,” Minna Lantis said. Their seaside seating was torn away, and the building appeared to have suffered severe structural damage.

“We used to have music here five nights a week,” she said, choking up. “It’s the worst thing I’ve seen in my life.”

Just up the beach, many of the historic Venetian Court bungalows — built in 1924 and painted bright colors from fuchsia to canary yellow — also suffered tremendous damage. Waterborne logs bludgeoned the front of a beachfront teal blue home, leaving the living room completely open to the elements.

Joan Downey, whose family has owned a bright pink home next door since 1972, said it appeared to have been rammed by a couple of logs, but with storm windows put up on Tuesday, they were hoping for the best inside. The row of houses hasn’t suffered this kind of trauma since the storms of 1982, when Downey remembers cleaning up and finding a dead seal in the back of the house.

“I can’t believe what this is going to do with the wharf. So many people fish there — this is going to be devastating for the restaurants,” Downey said. “This isn’t something you just piece back together quickly. It just breaks my heart.”

In Santa Cruz, parts of the popular sidewalk along West Cliff Drive collapsed as waves pummeled the manmade rocky riprap below. The scenic 3-mile walking and biking route was cordoned off for safety.

Despite images of the San Lorenzo River washing past the log ride at the Beach Boardwalk, amusement park spokeswoman Kris Reyes said there did not appear to be significant damage.

“There’s a little bit of wear and tear, things getting knocked over,” Reyes said. “But nothing structurally. None of the rides are impacted. None of the facilities are impacted.”

In Capitola, Bay Bar and Grill owner Patrick Lynn, who moved from Oakland 12 years ago to pursue his restaurant dreams, watched from across the street Thursday as giant waves crashed into the windows.

“I walked into my bar for two seconds to take some video, and I got so scared I walked right out,” he said.

The floor is destroyed, and possibly the pilings that hold up the restaurant over the water, he said. He has eight years left on his lease and fears he’ll never be able to re-open.

“I’ve lost everything,” Lynn said. “What do you do when you’ve lost your purpose?”

The mid-week storm was the third atmospheric river storm since last Friday. Scientists said conditions are lining up for a series of additional “pineapple express” storms in the next few days that could create conditions not seen since 2017.

That year, multiple atmospheric river storms drenched California in succession, culminating with a massive one in mid-February that ended the 2012-16 drought, wrecked the spillway at Oroville Dam and caused $100 million in flood damage in downtown San Jose.

This year, two more atmospheric river storms are shaping up for Saturday and Monday in Northern California, with still more potentially coming the following week or two, said Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego, and one of the nation’s leading experts on atmospheric rivers.

“If these storms continue to come onshore for the next two or three weeks, that will end the drought,” he said.

Because soils have become saturated after steady December rains, billions of gallons of water are finally flowing into reservoirs, which remain at low levels from the drought but are starting to rise, Ralph noted. Multiple atmospheric storms in succession also could cause major flooding, an issue that state officials highlighted Wednesday.

“Three weeks ago we were talking about exceptional drought,” said Karla Nemeth, director of California’s Department of Water Resources. “And here we are now talking about the biggest series of storms we’ve seen in five years.”

Here's what we're seeing for the cold front coming into the area during the evening commute and into the night. This cold front will bring strong winds and intense rain. Avoid all unnecessary travel! #CAwx pic.twitter.com/XroRdhS8wT

— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) January 4, 2023

To be sure, computer modeling that forecasts atmospheric river storms and other weather patterns is only precise about a week into the future. Beyond that, conditions can change, and forecasts are adjusted closer to the arrival date of storms.

But weather models generated by U.S. and European supercomputers are showing some of the best conditions for wet weather since California’s current drought began three years ago.

“The jet stream is straight-as-an arrow coming from Asia to the California coast,” said Jan Null, a meteorologist who owns Golden Gate Weather Services in Half Moon Bay. “It looks like an El Niño pattern. It is bringing a train of storms to us.”

Atmospheric rivers are the biggest “rivers” on Earth. Moisture-rich storms that often originate near Hawaii, they flow through the sky up to 2 miles above the ocean and carry twice the volume of water per second as the Amazon River and 25 times the volume of the Mississippi where it flows into the ocean.

On Wednesday, NOAA flew “hurricane hunter” planes into the current storm to gather data about its strength.

When high-pressure ridges off the coast block atmospheric rivers from California, diverting them to Canada or the Pacific Northwest, California can enter a drought. That happened repeatedly in the last major drought from 2012 to 2016, and for much of the past three winters. When the ridges are gone, as they are now, the storms can line up and hammer the West Coast like body blows from a prize fighter. But in moderation, they are key to the state’s water supply. In a typical year, California receives about a dozen such storms, which account for roughly 50% of its precipitation.

“The dry years vs. the wet years are basically because of too few or too many atmospheric rivers,” said Ralph, who devised a 1-5 scale for measuring atmospheric river storms, based on the amount of moisture they transport and the time they linger over land.

#GOES18 is now #GOESWest. A BIG THANKS to the SPoRT Data Production Team for transitioning our products today. We leave you with a GOES-18 animation of a bomb cyclone and impressive atmospheric river with a deep feed of moisture that extends back to Hawaii. #weather #satellites pic.twitter.com/RcvHWFSt9S

— NASA SPoRT (@NASA_SPoRT) January 4, 2023

Two “AR” storms, as they are called, doused the Bay Area Friday and Saturday. Those storms were category 1, the weakest, but category 3 farther north. Wednesday night’s storm was a category 3, accompanied by huge zone of low pressure called a “bomb cyclone.” Another AR storm this Saturday is expected to be a 2. The one Monday looks like a 4, Ralph’s team has forecast.

A series of other AR storms may continue for weeks, however, and should cause more concern, Ralph and other experts said.

“The impacts could be serious,” Ralph said. “The more of these that pile up back-to-back, the more likely reservoirs will fill up. We need to really pay attention in the next few weeks.”

Reservoirs across California remain low after three years of severe drought. The state’s largest, Shasta, near Redding, on Wednesday was 34% full — about 57% of its historical average for this date. Similarly, Oroville, in Butte County, was 39% full — about 74% of its average, and rising.

But with each storm, some reservoirs have already risen above normal levels. Folsom Reservoir, northeast of Sacramento, jumped in recent weeks to 58% full, or 144% of its historical average for this time of the year. Millerton Lake, north of Fresno, is now 77% full, or 146% of average.

Meanwhile, large storms in December have left California with the biggest New Year’s snowpack since 2011. On Wednesday, the statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of nearly one-third of California’s water, was 173% of its historical average. The Sierra acts as a giant frozen reservoir. As the snow melts in spring and summer, it sends water down rivers to refill reservoirs.

Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary of natural resources, said with reservoirs and groundwater levels still low after three very dry years, it’s too soon to declare the drought over. Last year, a very wet December was followed by the driest January, February and March in the state’s recorded history, and the snowpack ended on April 1 at 37% of normal.

“We are still in the first half of the game,” Crowfoot said. “We’ve got major points on the board in terms of precipitation, snow and rain that will be helpful in coming dry months. But we are a long way from understanding how this wet season impacts our overall drought.”

Much of California, including San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles, is under a flood watch today as an atmospheric river bombards the state with several inches of precipitation.

So what is an atmospheric river? https://t.co/z4mjIiyq0M pic.twitter.com/L4LQFiTmWt

— Inside Climate News (@insideclimate) January 4, 2023