 How is California still in a drought? Since Christmas, California has gotten an average of 8.6 inches of rain, which is huge for a state known for being as dry as my lips during a chapstick shortage. And though it's helped to get the state out of an extreme drought, 95% of the state still remains at some level of drought. Why? Well first off, it takes years and years of dryness that leads to water shortages to cause a drought. So it makes sense that even to start to get out of this one, California would need at least a year as wet as the wettest one on record. Also because recent storms have been coming so close together, water isn't even soaking into the ground like you could, with most of it just running off. There is some good news though. Snow packs, which make up 30% of California's water supply, have reached up to 267% of their normal size, and reservoirs are about to reach their historic average levels. Buuuut, it's going to take more than a few atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones to fix California's water problems.