You are now in San Diego County category.

Throughout the past couple weeks, I’ve felt almost as if I needed to build an ark to get to class. The greater Los Angeles area has been slammed with copious amounts of rain this season. During these monsoons, my trek from De Neve Holly all the way to Bunche Hall has been nothing short of a drenched, waterlogged nightmare. During this wet, wet winter quarter, you name it, we’ve seen it: soaked backpacks, umbrellas turned inside out, disgruntled and sopping wet students

How much did the recent series of rain storms in California contribute to lessening the state’s drought conditions? The National Weather Service office in San Diego tweeted a satellite photo showing California finally “greening up”. NWS San Diego also tweeted changes at Lake Hodges. A 2014 photo shows an area of the lake completely dry. A March 1, 2017 comparison photo shows the lake filled with water.

An end to California’s historic drought may finally be in sight, but it seems that the state’s water crisis is a mere drop in the bucket in relation to the decades of dirty dealings probed in the revealing National Geographic documentary, “Water & Power: A California Heist.” From the Monterey Amendments, a contentious policy that favored select Central Valley farmers, to the current ecologically problematic practice of groundwater extraction which could potentially create vast sinkholes, corporate thirst for control over the aquifer is emerging as the next environmental battleground.

Despite the deluge of rain in recent weeks, officials at the Padre Dam Municipal Water District continue working on a regional water reclamation program that converts sewage discharge into drinkable water. The still-controversial “toilet to tap” process has yet to be officially implemented, but it’s not that far off. An advanced water purification demonstration program, now in its second year, has a scheduled completion target of 2021. By then, reclaimed and purified sewage could be providing up to 30 percent of the district’s water demands.

Plunging the long, metal rod into the snow beneath his feet in the mountain town of Phillips, state snow survey chief Frank Gehrke measured the Sierra Nevada snowpack Wednesday not against California’s recent, historic drought but against its biggest rain years. “It’s in the top two or three, three or four snow accumulations for March,” Gehrke said, standing on a 9-foot-high pillow of fresh powder Wednesday morning.