Bloomberg Law
March 16, 2023, 4:47 PM

California’s Crippling Drought Is Almost Over After Big Storms

Brian K. Sullivan
Brian K. Sullivan
Bloomberg News

California’s three-year drought is on the verge of ending, thanks to a string of powerful Pacific storms in recent months that left behind a record snowpack in the Sierra Nevada range.

By June, conditions across most of the state will be the best they’ve been since 2020, Jon Gottschalck, chief of the operational prediction branch at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said in a conference call Thursday. The storms, called atmospheric rivers, brought “an astonishing amount of rain and snow to California,” he said.

California started the year with more than 97% of its land in drought, but that’s declined to ...