Not since 1959 has Stockton staggered into the new year with less than an inch of total rainfall. But that’s exactly what’s just happened. It almost seems like we’ve gone from drought, to flood, right back to drought. That may be premature. Our reservoirs are well above average, still flush with last year’s bounty. And there’s still plenty of winter left to add to that supply. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed here, too,” said Hannah Chandler, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

One of the hard truths revealed by California’s five-year drought is that many small, rural communities lack the resources to adapt to water shortages. In this case, that means both money and expertise. It can be very expensive, for instance, to build a new water treatment plant or connect with one in the next closest town. Even if a community finds the money to build a small treatment plant, it may not have anyone locally with the expertise to operate it.

Three years ago, California voters passed Proposition 1, a bond that provided $7.12 billion for water projects and reallocated another $425 million. The funds had to be split among seven categories: safe drinking water, water storage, flood management, water recycling, drought preparedness, ecosystem and watershed protection and groundwater sustainability. Ellen Hanak and Jelena Jezdimirovic at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) dove into the numbers to see how the proposition money has been spent throughout the state.

What a difference a year makes. The winter of 2017-18 is off to a slow start in the Sierra Nevada, a stark contrast from the record-busting snow totals last year. The contrast from last year is particularly evident in the Lake Tahoe Basin where winter is off to its third-driest start since 1980-81. Snow survey results posted Thursday show the basin is at 30 percent of normal for the date, compared to 67 percent on the same date last year.

The average American is using a lot less water on a daily basis. Six gallons less, to be exact. The US Geological Survey’s National Water Use Science Project has estimated water use in the United States every five years since 1950. In its most recent estimate published this fall, the USGS found that American daily water use per capita went from 88 gallons in 2010 to 82 gallons per capita in 2015.