Drought Eased by Winter Rain, but Here is Why You Should Still Conserve Water

The best news for the state is that the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides roughly 30 percent of California’s water supply, was at its highest level in five years. The 2016 snowpack was at 114 percent of the historic average.

Higher snowpack means more runoff to fill the groundwater that supplies the state’s multi billion-dollar agribusinesses in the San Joaquin Valley. The percentage of wells in 2016 that decreased more than 10 feet is nearly half of what it was last year.