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In some parts of the country, cold weather is threatening crops. Meanwhile, California has been so unseasonably wet that its deserts are experiencing what’s called a “super bloom.” After years of drought, the normally arid desert is lush. “It just looks like a sea of flowers,” says Janet Gordon, a geologist from Los Angeles. “You got purple, red, yellows and blues,” adds Joe Sheidness, visiting from San Diego. “It’s fantastic,” says Dennis Brian, from Reno, Nev., who says he was a flower child in the 1960s.

Mitch Brown jammed the blade of his loader into a two-story pile of snow outside Donner Ski Shop, the sports rental store he runs in Soda Springs. From there, Old Highway 40 toward bustling ski resorts was lined with walls of snow more than 20 feet high. “It snowed nearly 24 feet in 12 days,” Brown said recently. “We’ve been working 18-hour days to clear it.”

California, long burdened by a severe drought, is coming off one if its wettest winters in almost 20 years — but that doesn’t mean its water woes will be left behind. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides 60 percent of the state’s water, held an unusually immense amount of snow in January, according to data released Tuesday. That means more water for the region in the coming months. However, experts warned the abundance of the season was just an anomaly, not something to be counted on as the climate gets progressively warmer overall.