[Dave W]

OK, I will explain. California had a major drought and it doesn't go away just because there is rainfall. Often, when it rains hard, such as three inches of rain, the water often runs off and doesn't get a chance to soak in the soil. It takes a lot of sustained rain to raise the water level. A three inch rain is a drop in the bucket. It is better than nothing, but it will not by itself solve a drought. That is all the weatherman was trying to articulate.

A drought is often solved by sustained rainfall over a year or more that raises the water table, lifts the reservoirs back to normal level. That is when a drought is over. Hydrologists take soil samples and measures the moisture in soil at different depths to determine if a drought is getting better. Just because there is water in a ditch in the front of your yard does not indicate whether a drought is over.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

If you have a problem with run off you build spreader dams to allow more time for the rain to sink into the soil.

You also build reservoirs to catch and hold the rain.

That way rain does help the drought.

At least that is what people in other deserts do and have been doing for thousands of years.

In California the drought will never be over because there is power and money to be made in prolonging it.