It looks like November will be about an inch short of normal rainfall in Sacramento as the region dries out for the remainder of the month. Scattered showers on Monday are expected to clear away as a fast-moving system exits to the southeast. A high pressure system is expected to build along the west coast, leading to an absence of rain in Northern California through Sunday. If the rainfall stays away through the end of the month, Sacramento will end up with about 1.4 inches of rain, which is about an inch short of the 2.43 the city normally gets in November.

Local public agencies realized an important victory in a more-than-decade-long, who-should-foot-the-stormwater-bill battle — a battle focused on a permit issued by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board to the County of Los Angeles and more than 80 local agencies, or “co-permittees.” The lengthy battle was not over the requirements themselves or whether state agencies had the authority to issue them. At the crux of the conflict was the question: Who’s picking up the check? The answer from the California Supreme Court — California — is welcome news to local agencies.

The helicopter landed in the western hills above the San Joaquin Valley and out of the dust walked President John F. Kennedy. It was Aug. 18, 1962, and the sun would not let go. In the hollow of the mountain, where California was about to build its newest reservoir, the air felt like a blast furnace. Summer had baked the earth to a tan and shrunken form. The hills turned to hide. Though not a drop of rain had fallen from the sky since spring, no one in the assembled crowd, certainly not the cotton kings, thought of this as drought.