A Water-ful New Year

We try not to limit our reading to stories that confirm our biases (or our wishes), but we can't help it if this Mercury-News headline is above the fold. It feels like the drought is over. [bold added]

As the new year begins, California’s Sierra is closing in on the second-largest snowpack we’ve seen at this time of year in the last two decades, with more snow expected to pummel the mountain range in the coming days.

To be sure, the writers are cautious about jumping to conclusions (a caution they hardly ever display when they attribute every wild fire, hurricane, and dry spell to global warming):

On Saturday, the statewide average stood at a whopping 162% of normal compared to historic averages for this time of year, just eclipsing last year’s figure. But a Bay Area News Group analysis found that of the seven times in the last 20 years that California started the new year with an above-average snowpack, only twice — 2005 and 2011 — did it finish the snow season in April still above average.

We're not so cautious. It looks like a water-ful new year.