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

With a little help from El Niño, Mother Nature has turned on the spigot for California, though the North State so far has avoided the downpours that caused flooding elsewhere.

But that could change as a series of storms will continue to hit Redding and the surrounding mountains, said Nathan Owen with the National Weather Service’s office in Sacramento.

“Most of these storms are consistent with the El Niño pattern that’s been settling in the Pacific,” he said Wednesday.

About three-quarters of an inch had fallen Wednesday at the Redding Municipal Airport, he said.

The rain and snow Kern County has seen so far, has been a step in a positive direction, but definitely is not enough to end California’s drought.

Kern River Watermaster Dana Munn said what we see in the coming months will give us a better perspective on drought impacts.

“You almost have to look at it as an annual operation, of how the storms come in, how much water you’re able to keep in the reservoirs, how much water you’re able to recharge into the basin to replenish the groundwater,” said Munn.

The Truckee River Operating Agreement is a done deal.

Parties to the landmark water compact, which went into effect Dec. 1 after nearly three decades of negotiations and work, took time out Tuesday to celebrate.

“From a drought perspective, this is a game changer,” Leo Drozdoff, director of the Nevada Department of Conservation & Natural Resource, said Jan. 5. “It provides certainty in uncertain times.”

Water-starved Folsom Lake is beginning to slowly fill up and recover from its lowest water levels ever.

The state’s ninth-largest reservoir, the main water source for the sprawling Sacramento suburbs, shrank to a mere 135,561 acre feet on Dec. 4, 2015. The previous lowest level at Folsom was 140,600 acre feet, recorded during the 1976–77 drought. An acre foot is enough water to flood an acre of land under a foot of water, and roughly the amount required by a family of four over a year.

Restore the Delta and its coalition partners on Tuesday filed either formal protests or notices of intent to make formal statements with the State Water Resources Control Board to oppose permitting to change the point of water diversion in the Sacramento River to allow for Gov. Edmund Brown Jr.’s water tunnels to be built.

The twin tunnels touted by Mr. Brown would each be 40 feet in diameter and extend 30-35 miles.