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

It was our saving grace: Last winter, a mostly empty New Melones Lake swallowed up torrents of water that otherwise would have had to be dumped into a lower watershed that already was flooding. Without all of that room at New Melones, the damage along the lower San Joaquin River and in the Delta could have been much worse.

Thursday, Nov. 23 was the hottest Thanksgiving Day ever in Los Angeles and Newport Beach. The noon temperature in downtown L.A. hit 91 degrees at the official station, at USC. The previous record, 90, was set on Nov. 23, 1903, National Weather Service meteorologist Rich Thompson said. In Orange County, one NWS weather gauge at Newport Beach showed 89 degrees at 1 p.m., way past the previous record of 81 set in 2002. Santa Ana was at 88 at midday, below the 91 degree record set in 1950, NWS meteorologist Greg Martin said. Forecasters said heat records could also be set Thursday in the San Fernando and Antelope Valleys.

A study published in October set out to answer a question of special importance to dry regions like Southern Arizona: How will climate change affect what happens to water recharge in Western states? The short answer, according to University of Arizona researchers, is that in the future there will be about the same or more recharge in the north, and states in the south will see less.

Massive floods hit Houston and devastating hurricanes struck Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Yet one of the more remarkable stories in the past year is the catastrophe that did not happen: massive flooding in California. California experienced its wettest water year on record in 2016-17. In previous decades, that huge volume of water would have caused lethal floods, particularly in the Central Valley. In part, we were lucky. Reservoirs were empty from drought so they had abundant capacity, and there was sufficient time between big storms so the rainfall didn’t stack up.