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

Last week, the San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors declared an end to drought conditions in the region and asked California Governor Jerry Brown to rescind the statewide drought emergency regulations for regions with sufficient supplies. Owing to wet winter conditions and recent heavy rainfall, as of January 23, San Diego’s official rainfall measurement station recorded 172 percent of average rainfall since the start of the water year on Oct. 1.

The arrival of rains with the new year have tempered one of California’s most severe ongoing drought periods on record, which officially entered its sixth year in October 2016. The question remains whether California, and Orange County specifically, can see light at the end of the dry tunnel. The historic drought has caused local, regional and state agencies to take unprecedented action to address extraordinary conditions. However, drought or no drought, Californians must reevaluate their relationship with water.

The recent storms that have buried the Sierra Nevada in snow have taken a big bite out of the state’s five-year snowpack deficit, according to researchers. Using satellite data, computer models and snowpack measurements, University of Colorado at Boulder scientists estimated the water content of the snow that has fallen since late December. They then compared it with the total snowpack shortfall of the five-year drought.