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

As relentless sunshine continued to pound California on Thursday, the Sierra Nevada hit a reckoning point: There’s less snowpack now than on the same date three years ago, when the winter went down as the driest in recorded history and sent shudders through cities, farmlands and the state Capitol. The troubling lack of snow during the winter of 2014-15 not only shortchanged the state’s drinking-water reservoirs but left the Sierra nearly unrecognizable.

The lack of rain and snow in California has people wondering if we’re headed into another drought. There’s less than 25 percent of the average amount of snow in the Sierra Nevada. That on its own could incite drought panic. Lauren Bisnett with the California Department of Water Resources says the saving grace is last year’s storms, which filled up state reservoirs. For example, Bisnett says, “Shasta Reservoir is at 74 percent of capacity.”

The troubled Delta tunnels project was officially downsized Wednesday, as Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration announced it would attempt to build a single tunnel in its effort to re-engineer California’s elaborate water-delivery system. Unable to secure enough money from California’s water agencies for the original twin tunnels concept, the California Department of Water Resources said it would now try to build the project in phases: one tunnel now and a second tunnel years down the road.

We hear plenty these days about breakthroughs in green energy, robotics and communications. But as everyday technologies go, water management is virtually invisible to the general public. One organization that’s working to change that is ImagineH2O, a startup accelerator based in San Francisco. A nonprofit, it provides support to emerging companies working on water problems, helping them find investors and customers.