After five years of increasing drought, the level of Santa Barbara County’s thirst on Monday finally climbed from “severe drought” to “moderate drought,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which began keeping track of the statewide situation in December 2011. Santa Barbara County didn’t fall into drought until the eighth week of 2012 when it hit the monitor’s chart at “abnormally dry” before climbing through two additional levels until about September 2013, when along with San Luis Obispo and parts of Kern counties it became the first area in the state to reach “extreme drought.”