Weeks of historic rainfall in California mean public agencies that supply 27 million people will get much more water from the state than they were scheduled to get a month ago — enough to supply an estimated 4.4 million households for a year.
In December, state officials announced public water agencies would get just 5% of what they had asked for because of a severe drought that had depleted the state’s reservoirs to dangerously low levels.
But starting on New Year’s Eve, a weather phenomenon known as “atmospheric rivers” began pummeling California for weeks. Nine atmospheric rivers dumped an estimated 32 trillion gallons of water on the state in