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The U.S. Drought Monitor released May 5 shows some minor improvement in California drought conditions. But looking ahead to the dry season shows drought persisting for a fifth consecutive year in the Golden State.

In California, some moderate drought was removed in the northern portion of the state. The extreme northwest portion of the state accounts for the 4.27 percent of California where there is no drought. But 96 percent remains abnormally dry, with 89 percent in moderate, 74 percent in severe, 49 percent in extreme and 21 percent in exceptional drought.

My husband and I took a road trip a few weeks ago, driving from Los Altos down to Bakersfield on Interstate 5 and then east to Sedona, Ariz., returning via Bakersfield and then up Highway 101.

As far as the Pacheco Pass, the landscape was lyrically green with oaks and buckeyes sporting fresh foliage, and wildflowers filling the crevices between the hills with streams of yellow mustard, buttercups and golden poppies. Rock outcroppings were wreathed in ribbons of late-rising fog like the karst peaks in traditional Chinese landscapes.

When things go wrong — especially if they go really, historically wrong — people tend to look for answers. So when California entered the fourth year of one of the worst droughts the state had ever seen, everyone — the media, politicians, scientists — wanted to know what had gone wrong.

In the process, a number of things were set upon the altar of public opinion as scapegoats for the drought: lawns, golf courses, wealthy Californians taking more than their fair share of the state’s dwindling resources, climate change. But none provoked the maelstrom that surrounded the almond, which seemingly transformed overnight from a healthy snack to the evil source of California’s water woes.

Gazing down from atop 3,489-foot high Mt. Diablo, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levees create a patchwork of nearly 60 islands and tracts surrounded by water flowing toward San Francisco Bay.

The 1,100 linear miles of levees was created after the Gold Rush to reclaim vast wetlands for farming. The soil — laden with extremely rich nutrients — is considered among the most prime farmland in California.The levees ultimately made it possible for California to develop the planet’s most elaborate — and lengthy — movement of water stretching  as far as Shasta Reservoir to San Diego covering more than 670 miles.