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

Finally, rain. And snow. Some hail, even. Plus there’s more to come. A storm doused Northern California on Monday, ending Sacramento’s month-plus dry spell and setting the table for a heavy pounding that could dump up to 4 feet of snow on the Sierra Nevada range later this week. After a pause in the weather at mid-day, Sacramento was pelted with hail during a freakish afternoon thunderstorm. Some residents thought the city was blanketed with snow; the Fire Department tweeted that a snow pile caused a traffic tie-up near West El Camino Avenue.

A proposal to make California’s drought-era water restrictions permanent could allow the state to chip away at long-held water rights in an unprecedented power grab, representatives from water districts and other users told regulators Tuesday. Members of the state Water Resources Control Board delayed a decision about whether to bring back what had been temporary water bans from California’s drought, spanning 2013 to 2017. The plan is part of an effort to make water conservation a way of life, with climate change expected to lead to longer, more severe droughts.

According to Kiewit Infrastructure West Co., the company contracted to perform the repairs, work stopped heavy construction on the main spillway over the winter, but plans to start back up in the coming months to meet its January 2019 deadline, Appeal-Democrat reported. “Our crews will be ready to go May 1, weather permitting, said Kiewit Project Director Jeff Petersen.

hadn’t been living in arid Southern California for long before I toured the Colorado River Aqueduct — the 242-mile system of dams, pumps, and channels that divert water through the Mojave Desert to the sprawling 20-million population Los Angeles region. It’s a vast engineering marvel and something that, in concept, is remarkably simple. The New Deal-era Parker Dam — a magnificent Art Deco structure that straddles the California-Arizona border — traps water from the river and pumps it to a holding pool at the top of a mountain.

Earthquakes aren’t the only concern on the Pacific Coast. Though sea level rise is most often paired with Miami’s future, thousands of miles away, tidal wetlands along the West coast are vulnerable to sea level rise too, particularly in California and Oregon. Focusing on 14 estuaries on the West Coast, a new study published Wednesday in Science Advances localizes the future destruction due to sea level rise.