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

The current El Niño is already the strongest since 1950 in many areas of California, including the fertile San Joaquin Valley, where many of the country’s fruits and vegetables are grown. Fresno has seen 6.61 inches of rain since October 1; the historical average is 4.64 inches, according to the Fresno Bee.

 

There is more rain on the way: the National Weather Service forecasts two new storm systems will move into the area on Monday and Tuesday, dropping rain in the Valley and snow in the Sierra Nevada.

 

Farmers in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley are bracing to receive no irrigation water from the federal government for a third consecutive year.

 

They’re hoping for El Nino-driven storms to produce the very wet winter they need. Reservoirs and groundwater supplies are critically low after four drought years.

North State residents are seeing something this month they haven’t seen in several years.

It has been six years since this much rain has fallen over the North State in January, according to the National Weather Service.

Since the beginning of the month, 8.41 inches of rain has fallen at the Weather Service’s rain gauge at the Redding Municipal Airport — almost as much as the past five years combined. In January 2015, only .26 inches of rain fell on Redding.

California cities that are hot, dry or crowded, or have managed to come up with new sources of water, might be able to get a slight break in the state’s drought-time water-conservation targets, state officials said Friday.

 

California’s Water Resources Control Board is slated to decide in February whether to slightly ease water-conservation targets for some cities and towns. Gov. Jerry Brown mandated last year that the state overall had to see 25 percent less water use by cities and towns to cope with the state’s four-year drought.

The Bay Area will see a brief reprieve from rain most of Friday after a weak system moved out of the region, but unsettled weather is set to return soon with a series of storms lined up across the Pacific and blowing toward Northern California that could bring as much as 10 inches of rain to the wettest spots over the next seven days.

 

Rainfall totals from Thursday’s overnight storm were relatively scant with San Francisco and Oakland picking up just under a quarter of an inch,