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Atmospheric rivers are California’s drought-busters. As we saw in the recent series of storms between January 7 and 10, a single wet weekend can dramatically reverse the state’s water accounts. The state still hasn’t completely pulled out of the drought. But just a few days after those storms, the California Department of Water Resources increased its water delivery forecast for 2017 from 45 percent to 60 percent for water agencies that rely on the State Water Project. Atmospheric rivers are just what they sound like: a column of water carried aloft by a narrow band of wind.

Ocean rise already is worsening the floods and high tides sweeping California this stormy winter, climate experts say, and this month’s damage and deaths highlight that even a state known as a global leader in fighting climate change has yet to tackle some of the hardest work of dealing with it. The critical steps yet to come include starting to decide which low-lying cities, airports and highways, along with threatened landmarks like San Francisco’s Embarcadero, to hoist above the rising water and which to abandon — and where to start getting the many billions of dollars for those climate rescues.

Northern California — including Woodland — is about to turn the page on the wettest January in 20 years, which begs the question: How much rain will February bring? The answer won’t come for another four weeks, but the entire Northern California region is expected to begin February with another storm system which could drop as much as 3 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service.Rain is expected to move into the region late Wednesday, with the heaviest downpours expected Thursday, according to Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the weather service.