Imagine you are sitting on the cusp of an historic event – one that is unfolding slowly but with mighty force, and one that will last well past your lifetime. Imagine you have people in your communities who are desperately trying to tell you about these changes, and what they have to say is numbing, impossible to embrace. This is the story of climate change in 2016 – and with it, California’s long-term drought.

The economics of the long-term drought have been substantiated: from a lack of ground water, the changes in farming, the jobs that are and will continue to disappear, to the cost of catastrophic floods and fires. The human effect — the “psychological responses” — is less understood.

Recent El Niño storms have increased the Sierra Nevada snowpack to 115 percent of normal, more than drought-stricken California has had in five years, officials said Tuesday. The electronic reading by the State Department of Water Resources was the highest since it reached 129 percent in 2011.

The Sierra snowpack contributes nearly one-third of California’s water when it melts in the spring. However, officials say the snowpack would have to be at 150 percent of normal by April 1 to ease the four-year drought. Key reservoirs are beginning to rise from the early winter storms but remain low. Lake Oroville in Butte County, the State Water Project’s largest reservoir, is at 60 percent of its historical average for this time of year.

The heavens have opened up this winter and are dumping gobs of snow on the Sierra Nevada.

The snowpack in the Sierra contains more water than any year since 2011 on this date, according to the California Department of Water Resources. It’s a good sign, but no guarantee that the four-year drought that has left the Golden State high and dry is coming to an end, officials said.

El Niño is currently a welcoming sight for water conservation efforts, despite the potential for flooding and mudslides as California enters what may be its fifth year of the worst drought in state history.

This year’s current El Niño system has tied with a system from 1997 as the strongest on record, with wetter conditions for California from January to March, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

A California water official said Friday farmers are not optimistic about their chances of getting water from the government this year, despite a strong El Nino hammering the state with rainfall.

Deputy General Manager of the Westlands Water District Johnny Amaral told reporters federal authorities don’t expect surface water in his district any time soon. The message is bound to stifle San Joaquin Valley farms, most of which receive the bulk of their water from Westlands.