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

Drone video footage released Friday shows how construction progressed on the Lake Oroville main spillway from July 1 through July 6, 2017. The reconstruction of Oroville Dam’s flood-control spillways began in May, more than three months after a near disaster forced the emergency evacuation of thousands of downstream residents. Kiewit Corp. of Omaha, Neb., which was awarded a $275.4 million contract to fix the dam’s two spillways, has more than 200 employees on the site, a workforce that will balloon to 500 by August.

• Texas struggled through its driest year in history in 2011. Four years later was its wettest ever. The Mississippi River rose to all-time-high flood levels in 2011. In 2012, its second-lowest. After a six-year drought that made agricultural irrigation a political hot potato, Northern California experienced nearly double the normal rainfall this year, beating the old mark set in 1983. As the planet warms, a less ballyhooed new normal is emerging in weather extremes. With deluge following dust, the record book is becoming increasingly difficult to rely on for those who study the weather.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on whether Indian tribes hold special rights to the groundwater beneath their reservations, and the court will now have a chance to settle the question in a case that could redraw the lines in water disputes across the country. The case revolves around whether the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has a federally established “reserved right” to groundwater on its reservation in Palm Springs and surrounding areas in the desert.

Evelyn Rios wept in 2014 when the well went dry at her home of 46 years – the home where she and husband Joe raised five children on farm-worker wages.They cannot afford another well, so they do without. Her angst only grew as California’s five-year drought dragged on. Finally, after one of the wettest winters on record, Gov. Jerry Brown announced in April that the drought had ended. But situation remains grim, says Rios, 80, who lives in rural Madera County in California’s San Joaquin Valley. She thought she was being hooked up to the city of Madera’s water system.

A new bill in the state Legislature would require California to review the environmental impacts of a company’s proposal to pump groundwater from beneath the Mojave Desert and sell it to Southern California cities — a controversial plan that was slowed down by President Obama, but which appears to have the backing of the Trump administration. Cadiz Inc. hopes to pump 16.3 billion gallons of groundwater annually in the heart of the desert, about 75 miles northeast of Palm Springs, on land surrounded by Mojave Trails National Monument and near Mojave National Preserve.