Northern California is getting drenched. In the first 10 days of March, northern parts of the state have received more rainfall than they normally do throughout the entire month.

All of this is thanks to El Niño, that climate pattern that brings extreme weather to...everywhere.

California’s recent downpours have dramatically lifted the levels of key reservoirs. The Lake Shasta reservoir has risen 100 feet since December and is at 70% capacity and Folsom Lake is at 69% capacity, a 19% increase from the historic average.

So much water is accumulating that reservoir floodgates have been opened to get ready for future rainfall, sending billions of gallons downstream for drinking water, agriculture and wildlife replenishment.

But amid this deluge, scientists are telling people not to celebrate.

California’s drought is enormous. It’s been crippling the state since 2012, drying up massive amounts of farmland and causing citizens to worry about how long they let the faucet run.

The hardest hit regions are in the middle and south of the state, areas that haven’t received heavy rainfall in the recent downpours.

For the drought to be meaningfully mitigated in the short-term, the state would need a few more weeks of above-average rainfall. And for long-term improvement, the state would need a few more winters like this one that is filled with snow. Snow instead of rain because snow melts gradually and can sustain water sources for longer.

Looking at the bigger picture, California’s drought comes down to structural problems. While scant rainfall over the past several years has made things worse, the problem stems from the state’s over-allocation of water supplies, the vast majority of which goes to agriculture. (A lot of this agriculture is devoted to water-glutton crops like alfalfa, which are only planted because of federal subsidies.)

With the current model, the state needs above-average rainfall every year just to maintain the status quo.

A lot of California’s water comes from the Colorado river. The river’s water is divvied up based on measurements and quotas from a century ago that vastly overestimated the amount of available water.

So for the past century, this crucial water supply has been annually overdrawn.

Over time, the river’s base level was depleted, so when the state was struck with an extreme lack of rainfall a few years ago, structural weaknesses like the over reliance on the dwindling Colorado river were exposed.

This brings us back to the rain of the past few weeks.

There’s no doubt that this rain is good. It’s restoring reservoir levels, replenishing parts of the state and providing peace of mind.

But if California really wants to cope with its drought--especially as climate change makes the possibility of drought more likely in the future--it needs to be smarter about how it delivers water.

This latest rush of water may help the state run smoothly for a period, but it doesn’t address the future.

Telling people to take shorter showers isn’t going to fix the problem. Demanding that farmers use water more efficiently will.

TopicsWater & SanitationDroughtWaterCaliforniaagricultureRainfall

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El Niño lifts California reservoirs to capacity, but is it enough to end the drought?

By Joe McCarthy