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At Heritage Oak Winery, acres of 10-year-old grapevines are still underwater. It’s been days since Lodi’s last rainfall, but for Heritage Oak’s owner, Tom Hoffman, it may be a while before the flooding brought by two wet months begins to recede. Plenty of farmers still have fields, vineyards and other land covered by standing water. Not Hoffman. “I don’t have standing water, I have running water,” he said. Heritage Oak’s property in Acampo includes about 60 acres of bottom land along the Mokelumne River, and 10 acres are planted with grapes, he said.

If you don’t think California has seen enough rain this year, just wait. There may be more to come. Federal forecasters said Thursday that the chances of an El Niño developing by fall are on the rise — now between 50 and 55 percent —an outlook that could skew the odds in favor of yet another wet winter. “There are a lot of players on the (weather) field,” said Emily Becker, a research scientist with the Climate Prediction Center, the federal agency that released the latest report on the El Niño climate pattern.

The wet winter has raised water levels for many lakes in SoCal, but the discovery of microscopic larvae in an underground pipe system at one Inland Empire lake could lead to an expensive problem. Paul Rochelle, with the Metropolitan Water District, said the recent discovery of the larvae could lead to a massive infestation of invasive mussels throughout the water project at Diamond Valley Lake. “Everyone should be concerned. They are a nuisance,” he said.

Two weeks after Butte County asked for the federal government’s intervention on the Lake Oroville problem, the state got around to filing a response. The five pages in the state’s response can be summarized in three words: Go pound sand. It’s exactly the type of response we’d expect from the state Department of Water Resources. As we’ve documented many times over many years on this page, the state doesn’t like to answer to anybody when it comes to operation of the Lake Oroville hydroelectric project.

This picture from NASA’s Earth Observatory shows how much land in California’s Central Valley is sinking, due primarily to the drawing of groundwater during periods of drought. Heavy rains have fallen on many parts of the state this winter, but the image above is a reminder of the lingering effects of drought, even in wetter times. As the legend at the bottom of the picture suggests, the yellowest areas are those with the greatest degree of subsidence (the term for sinking land) and the bluest areas are those with the least.