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As Governor Jerry Brown asks for additional federal assistance following February’s heavy storms, a larger question looms as to how California should pay to repair – and improve – its defense against floods. In the request dated March 19, Brown asked President Donald Trump to declare a major disaster for the state, estimating the total damage at more than $539 million. That sum, however, represents just a fraction of the billions of dollars experts say are needed to protect Californians from the threat of flood.

The confounding statements from the state Department of Water Resources about the Lake Oroville spillway crisis just keep coming.The disaster has been a public-relations nightmare from the beginning, but DWR keeps making matters worse with its words and actions. As the repair bill for the crumbling spillway and the emergency response approached $200 million last week, DWR acting Director Bill Croyle — who has exhibited a troublesome tendency to downplay the incident since it started Feb. 7 — used an inappropriate analogy when asked at a press conference whether the crisis could have been prevented and who was responsible.

Over the years, many of the birds that visit Shasta County have found a migratory fuel stop in the richness of the Salton Sea, a short hour’s drive from Palm Springs. The flood that re-created it must have been of almost Biblical proportions.  In 1905-07, canal levees were breached, sending the entire flow of the Colorado River into a vast basin – the bed of the ancient, dry Lake Cahuilla. Thus the modern Salton Sea was formed.

The 2016-17 rainfall season is the ninth wettest on record for Sacramento – and more precipitation is on the way Friday. Nearly 30 inches of rainfall has fallen in Sacramento, 29.93 inches to be exact. Northern California rainfall has swollen rivers, filled reservoirs and ended drought conditions. “The main reason it’s been so wet is that we’ve had double the atmospheric river events that we typically see in a water year,” said Brooke Bingaman, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

Outside the window of Helen Dahlke’s office, at the University of California at Davis, the clouds hang low, their edges seeming to brush against the building. It’s raining intensely, an unusual event in a perpetually parched state suffering from a five-year drought. “It looks like the end of the world,” says Dahlke happily. As a hydrologist and professor who studies how water flows over and through rock, soil, fields, and farms, she is something of an H2O whiz.