With just weeks left in California’s rainy season, El Niño has distributed uneven relief to an arid state. As a result, regulators must consider lifting state water restrictions that took effect last April in some places and not in others, the Chronicle explains.

“February was incredibly warm and dry,” David Pierce, a researcher at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, recalled to the Atlantic earlier this month. “If you look at the curves of El Niño, February to April is when we see rainy years differentiate themselves. It’s already March. There’s another six weeks of wet season, then that’s all she wrote.”