Some reservoirs in Arizona, one of the states hit hardest by the drought, are filling to the brim. The Salt River Project, a large water provider in the Phoenix area, has been spilling water from its Granite Reef Dam for the first time in nearly seven years because there is too much to store. "We are getting running rivers in Phoenix again," said Jack Lavelle, a spokesman for the Arizona water department. "We are looking to fill every pail we can."the buried lede:
A report this week by the National Drought Mitigation Center was sunny in its description of the stormy weather that has been relentlessly pounding the Southwest and parts of California. As officials in Southern California and other waterlogged areas distributed sandbags because of flood and mudslide warnings, the report declared that the unusually wet weather was delivering a small but critical punch to the drought. "While flooding caused many problems, the good news is that these totals have finally started to put a dent in the long-term drought that has persisted in this region," the report said. It would take several years of similarly wet weather to end the drought, and some drought-stricken parts of the West, most notably Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, have been largely sidestepped by the storms. Water levels in many reservoirs across the region remain at half of capacity or less. "What happens in the next two to three to four months is critical," said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center, which is based at the University of Nebraska. Even so, Mr. Svoboda and other water experts said, the rains are washing away some of the pessimism of recent years, giving hope where there has been very little. "They just need to get this one behind them and hope for a couple more years like it," said Gary Bardini, the chief hydrologist for the Department of Water Resources in California, a state that is largely outside the zone with the most serious drought but nonetheless feels its impact, given the locations of some California water supply. "We are hoping for our neighbors that the rain just keeps coming."
Some officials in California are of two minds, though, because of the great toll the heavy rains have taken in many parts of the state. The National Weather Service said storms that began Friday and are expected to continue through Monday could drop 20 inches of rain in the highest elevations around Los Angeles, causing severe flooding and mudslides. On Friday, waves in San Francisco Bay splashed over seawalls, flooding several thoroughfares. "That old woman up there, Mother Nature, is throwing three waves of storms at us this weekend," said Bill Hoffer, a National Weather Service spokesman in Oxnard, Calif., near Los Angeles.