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After a decade of nearly continuous drought, a levee break – even in an inherently flood-prone place like San Joaquin County – seems a strange and disconcerting sight. County officials have reported two such breaks in recent days, including this one on White Slough northwest of Stockton. No damage to buildings has been reported, though officials on Tuesday were assessing the harm to agriculture. Water has also sloshed over the top of levees or seeped through them in certain areas.

After a half-decade of drought, California has been buffeted this winter by a series of powerful rain and snowstorms that dumped countless gallons of water on the state’s watersheds. Some of the deluge was captured in the form of mountain snows that will feed rivers and streams during the annual spring melt. But at lower elevations, it was rain, some retained in man-made reservoirs that had been seriously depleted, but most flowing swiftly to the Pacific Ocean.

Droughts are common in California, a large, generally dry, and hydrologically complex place.  So it is hard to rely on a single index of the end or beginning of a drought.  A single storm is rarely enough to end a drought in California, especially a long drought like the one that seems to be mostly ending now.  Regular hydrologic statistics can be used as indicators of drought, but these do not do justice to how droughts actually end (or begin).

In Southern California in the fall of 2015, a giant natural gas leak not only caused one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history, it also knocked out a critical fuel source for regional power plants. Energy regulators needed a quick fix. But rather than sticking with gas, they turned to a technology more closely associated with flashlights: batteries. They freed up the utilities to start installing batteries — and lots of them.

California’s current La Niña period, characterized by highly unpredictable rainfall patterns, might mean the end of the statewide drought, according to UC Berkeley environmental experts. If the rainfall continues further into the new year, most, if not all, of the state will likely see the end of the drought, according to assistant professor of water and climate Ted Grantham. Grantham said there are two definitions of a drought — the traditional meteorological drought is characterized by significantly below average rainfall. Another definition, however, also considers water supply in reservoirs.