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

“Lake Oroville is currently at elevation 854 feet, which is 46 feet from the top,” says Kevin Dossey, Senior Engineer with the Department of Water Resources, “It’s come up more than 204 feet since the low point in December…so it’s really been coming up fast.”

Engineers could begin releasing water from the Lake Oroville Dam soon. Says Dossey, “The snow levels have been pretty high, so these big storms, while they’re producing snow in the upper elevations, they’re also producing a lot of runoff directly into the lake from the basin.”

The White House on Tuesday unveiled several billion dollars’ worth of corporate commitments to water research and development during a high-level summit.

Pegged to World Water Day, the summit was intended to draw attention to specific state and corporate pledges as well as new Obama administration initiatives prompted in part by Western states’ drought and the Flint, Michigan, drinking water scandal.

California’s rice farmers pride themselves on environmental stewardship, saying their flooded fields provide habitat for millions of ducks and geese in an era when traditional marshlands have largely disappeared.

Now a giant Yolo County farm controlled by the family of Sacramento land baron Angelo K. Tsakopoulos will test whether it can grow rice with water measured in drops. Conaway Ranch, a 17,000-acre farm in which the Tsakopoulos family acquired controlling interest in 2010, said Monday it will work with water-use experts from Israel to experiment with drip irrigation on a small portion of its rice fields.

With storms calming down, does that mean El Niño is over? KRON’s Justine Waldman asked the experts on Monday to get some answers.

All models indicate that El Niño is weakening. Bay Area residents took out their umbrellas, wore rain boots, and packed in the sandbags–all to prepare for the pounding rains. Experts predicted a strong El Niño, or warming in the Pacific Ocean, that would bring some drought-busting rain to California.

President Barack Obama on Monday directed the federal government to come up with a less reactionary and more long-term strategy for dealing with drought.