You know the answer already.

No, the drought isn’t over in Southern California – even with this burst of insane amounts of rain the last five days, Alex Tardy, a National Weather Service meteorologist in San Diego, said Monday, Jan. 23.

“It’s not likely that this month or next month we’ll erase the drought because our deficit is so large,” Tardy said. “The one thing we have to keep in mind is that our deficits are still 20 to 24 inches of rain over the past six years.”

At the same time, yes, absolutely, this winter’s rain is making a big dent in the drought, Tardy said.

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He said that will be made clear on Thursday, when the U.S. Drought Monitor, which works closely with the National Weather Service, will issue its next drought update. For areas covered by the San Diego office – which include Orange County and western Riverside and San Bernardino counties – the Weather Service will recommend a one-level improvement in drought status across the board, Tardy said.

In other words, he said, it will be recommended that areas declared to be in “extreme drought” be changed to “severe drought,” and areas in “severe drought” be recast as “moderate drought.”

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Jayme Laber, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, said he wasn’t sure what his office will recommend for Los Angeles County.

“Across Southern California you’ll probably see some sort of improvement,” Laber said. “It’s too early to tell exactly at this point.”

But what a ride this has been.

“We’re on an incredible roll right now,” said Richard Minnich, an earth sciences professor at UC Riverside.

Minnich lives in Riverside and has a rain gauge in his back yard. He said he’s already recorded 11 inches for the season to date – or roughly what the area receives in an average year.

Similar results are being reported around the region.

Seasonal rainfall totals are running close to 10 inches at many spots in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, Tardy said.

“So we’re almost at our seasonal average here in mid-January,” he said. “And, of course, our wettest month on average is February. And March is quite wet too.”

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To the north, where much of the state’s water supply lies frozen in the form of snow draping the Sierra Nevada, conditions have improved dramatically.

As of Monday, the statewide snowpack average was 193 percent of what it is on average at this point in the season, the California Department of Water Resources reports.

“The reservoirs are all doing good,” said Doug Carlson, a spokesman for the Department of Water Resources in Sacramento.

“We are cautiously optimistic that this will be a fantastic water year,” Carlson said. “But it can change on a dime. And we’ve seen that all the time in Southern California.”

Farther south, the reservoirs are responding, though they are not yet full, underscoring what is involved in recovering from a multi-year drought.

For example, Castaic Lake in Los Angeles County has twice as much water in it as it did this time last year, state water department statistics show. However, it is 71 percent full and holding less water than it historically does at this time of the season.

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In the Inland region, Lake Hemet at 4,300 feet in the San Jacinto Mountains is 53 percent full, said Tom Wagoner, general manager for the Lake Hemet Municipal Water District, which operates the reservoir and provides water to rural agricultural customers in the Hemet area.

Lake Hemet stood at 45 percent capacity in the fall before it started raining, Wagoner said. The level has come up 4 feet since then, he said, but is still 15 feet below the top.

Numbers notwithstanding, it has been raining like crazy. And it could continue for one more day.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Tardy said. “We’re going to see waves of showers and thunderstorms all the way through Tuesday morning. Some places could pick up another inch of rain with those showers.”

Sunny skies are apparently on the way.

Minnich said the jet stream is going to veer away from Southern California and take with it storms for several days at least. But don’t get too used to the blue skies.

Minnich said chances look good that the storm track will return.

“Sometime in February or March, we’re going to get bashed again,” he said. “We’re drawing these incredible atmospheric rivers in and we’re going to do that again.”

As well, Carlson advises residents not to get too used to free water from the sky.

At some point, Mother Nature’s spigot will switch off. And it will be important to continue to practice the conservation measures we’ve learned during the drought, he said.

“Conservation is a California way of life,” Carlson said.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9699 or ddowney@scng.com; Twitter: PE_DavidDowney