Drought’s not over

With the mother of all storms rolling across California over the weekend and more rain expected this week, can we declare the drought over? Not by a long shot.

Granted, the landscape is looking greener, the reservoirs fuller and the Sierra snowpack deeper (it was at 103 percent of normal for this time of year Friday). But we are not even three weeks into winter. Deluge quickly can turn into a dry spell. Remember 2012, when we saw our last rain for a year in January? A few storms — even doozies like these — are not enough to make up for five years of drought (especially when there was only one wet year between this and the last).

Rain drenched the north part of the state but until last month only dribbled a few drops in the south. Central Coast reservoirs are nearly empty, most notably in Santa Barbara, where outdoor irrigation is completely banned. A few small Central Valley communities continue to truck or pipe in water because well pumps are still sucking sand.

Water managers — and the rest of us — can’t relax until the groundwater levels are restored. Desperate farmers spent millions of dollars to sink deeper wells as the drought dragged on, over-drafting the supply. Then the rain came, but the water is percolating slowly into the earth. We won’t know how the aquifers are recovering until the spring groundwater report.

The state relaxed the water conservation rules in May. The State Water Resources Control Board will discuss them Jan. 18 and vote in February. The governor certainly won’t lift the drought emergency order before the end of our rainy season (April), if he lifts it all.

So while we’ve tired of timing our showers, it’s too soon to say the drought is over. Californians can comfort themselves with the fact that we’ve made it this far and we’re learning how to live with drought.