You are now in California and the U.S. category.

Northern California saw the biggest improvements in the Drought Monitor released on Thursday.  Beneficial winter rain and snow has helped moved the extreme Northwest coast out of a historic drought.

In January, all of the state was in some drought category. The most severe category of exceptional drought covered 43 percent of the state. That number is now down to 32% coverage. Looking at the two most severe categories combined, extreme and exceptional drought,  the coverage has dropped from 69 percent to 55 percent.

In what may be an ominous sign for the end of the drought, the El Niño that brought Northern California its wettest winter in five years is continuing to weaken and appears to be giving way to its atmospheric sibling — La Niña.

Despite the wettest winter in five years, an overwhelming majority of Californians believe that the state faces an extremely serious water shortage and plan to continue conserving water, according to a poll released Thursday.

Once again, House Republicans have proposed to weaken the Endangered Species Act at the expense of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a day after the Metropolitan Water District committed to spending $175 million to buy five Delta islands.

The combination is enough to give some Northern California environmentalists the willies. The seller, a partnership led by Swiss-based Zurich Insurance Group that owned the islands, long sought to make money off the islands, perhaps by turning them into reservoirs. The buyer, MWD, has designs related to its responsibility to supply water to 19 million Southern Californians.