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Southern Californians who received cash rebates for replacing their lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping will soon get a federal tax form in the mail reporting the amount, but water officials said Thursday it is still not clear whether the reimbursement will be taxable.

Officials from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — which funded a $340-million incentive program — say they are sending 1099 forms to turf rebate recipients of $600 or more and leaving reporting up to participants and their tax advisers.

Southern Californians who received cash rebates for replacing their lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping will soon get a federal tax form in the mail reporting the amount, but water officials said Thursday it is still not clear whether the reimbursement will be taxable.

Officials from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — which funded a $340-million incentive program — say they are sending 1099 forms to turf rebate recipients of $600 or more and leaving reporting up to participants and their tax advisers.

San Diego has stayed pretty dry after an early burst of El Niño-driven storms drenched Southern California in early January. But recent storms in Northern California have kept rain and snow levels climbing steadily.

So far this wet season, statewide rain and snowfall have been just about average. The latest update from the KPBS Drought Tracker shows that average trend holding strong.

A high-pressure system is chasing El Niño storms away from Southern California, shrinking the region’s chances for a winter wet enough to ease the drought. The same system has been blocking Pacific rainstorms from California for several years, National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Stachelski said.

“It moves around slightly, but overall it’s been there most of the winter. It’s generally the same pattern we’ve seen in the last few winters, which is why we’re in such a severe drought,” Stachelski said Tuesday.

The El Niño rainstorm had already turned Nick Blom’s almond orchard into a quagmire. Still, he wheeled open the lid of a massive irrigation pipe. Fifteen minutes later, a gurgling belch heralded a gush of water that surged over the lip of the pipe and spread across five acres of almond trees.

Blom is neither crazy nor self-destructive. He’s a volunteer in an experiment run by UC Davis that could offer a partial solution to California’s perennial water shortages, and in the process, challenge some long-standing tenets of flood control and farming in the Central Valley.