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

For many homeowners in Sonoma and Napa counties, nothing could have been more welcome than the splashing of rain that fell on Northern California last Thursday – the first significant precipitation in about five months. The rain helped put an end to the fires burning in the area, which first ignited on October 8, and have wreaked hellish destruction on Santa Rosa and other communities. However, the recent rain – and the precipitation to come in the months ahead – will bring considerable environmental impacts of their own, especially to the waterways, and even water treatment plants, downstream of destroyed forests and incinerated neighborhoods.

It is by now a familiar story: The storm hits, the cities flood, dramatic rescues ensue to save people from the rising waters, followed by the arduous and expensive cleanup. But chances are you’ve thought less about the deadly and economically destructive consequences of a slower-moving culprit: drought. Repeated droughts around the world are destroying enough farm produce to feed 81 million people for a year and are four times more costly for economies than floods, the World Bank found in a new study.

If two massive, 40-mile long, 40-foot-diameter tunnels that would direct Sacramento River water around the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Central and Southern California are too big, too expensive and too scary to contemplate, how about splitting the difference and going with a single tunnel? That’s been the response of some officials and observers after actions by a number of the water agencies that were slated to participate in the $17-billion California WaterFix put the fate of the twin tunnels in doubt.

The California Department of Water Resources and the Army Corps of Engineers are repairing 30 sites that suffered “critical” damage this winter and are preparing to fix another 10. But, there are 100 locations that have been tagged as “serious” that will not be addressed this year. “The contingency plan, what we’re going to do is really lean into flood-fighting,” said Jon Ericson with DWR. “Monitoring the situation to see if the condition is going to progress to something that may cause flooding in a local area,” he says.