Not too long ago in this season of California”s massive and extended drought, climate experts saw a small glimmer of hope on the horizon: Predictions for a wet El Ni?o season coming in the winter that would bring badly needed rain and relief to a parched state.

Now that glimmer is fading fast, and the drought has gotten even worse.

One hundred percent of California is in a severe drought, 77 percent is in an extreme drought and 33 percent is in an exceptional drought, according to a report released last week by the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb.

“Those are remarkable numbers,” said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist and the center”s monitoring program leader.

The drought monitoring team in Lincoln has never seen an exceptional drought since it started keeping detailed data in 1999. The D4 category — a foreboding maroon color on a California drought map — extends from Sacramento and the Bay Area through the Central Valley, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

Predictions for a much-anticipated wet 2014-15 winter are waning.

“The El Ni?o had a very promising, dramatic surge in January, February and March, but now as we enter summer, all of a sudden it is disappearing,” said climatologist Bill Patzert, looking up from a dozen satellite images on his computer screen at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena. “The great wet hope is going to be the great wet disappointment.”

Patzert, who once was booed off the stage at an American Meteorological Society meeting in January 2007 for predicting an El Ni?o would fizzle, often goes against the scientific grain. However, that year, the El Ni?o, a warming of the ocean waters that often brings rain and sometimes flooding, had weakened as he said it would, resulting in the driest rain season in the history of Los Angeles, up to that time.

The movement from extreme to exceptional drought occurred this summer. A year ago, none of the state was in the exceptional or extreme drought categories, according to the drought mitigation center”s data.

How can California and the western states get worse? The categories count duration, which has lengthened, and demand, which spikes during the summer season, Svoboda said. The effects are becoming more noticeable, too, as more farmland lies fallow and supermarkets are recording higher prices for beef and produce.

When Patzert predicted what he colorfully called the “Godzilla El Ni?o” of 1997-98, most meteorologists and coast dwellers hoped he was wrong. They feared floods, mudslides and alterations in fishing patterns.

Now, El Ni?o — named after the Christ child because it usually shows up in December — is looked upon as the savior for California.

But not every El Ni?o is a drought buster. Patzert says El Ni?os come in small, medium, large and jumbo. The small and medium ones don”t produce rainstorms. “I don”t want to be the spoiler but what the data shows me is this El Ni?o is not building. It is dying,” he said.

Climatologists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration”s Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Md., released a bulletin earlier this month saying there”s an 80 percent chance of an El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation in September, October or November, and 82 percent chance from November to January.

However, national climatologists have backed away from predicting a strong El Ni?o like the one that doubled the area”s average rainfall in 1997-98.

“It is different than what folks were thinking a few months ago. At this point we are only favoring a moderate type of event,” said Michael Halpert, acting director of NOAA”s climate center, in an interview.

Halpert said the warmer ocean temperatures seen in March and April, which would trigger the jet stream to deliver more storms to Southern California, are not as warm anymore. “It doesn”t compare to 1997.”

Having a tilt toward an El Ni?o winter is a lot like a gambler going to Vegas with loaded dice, he said. He”s more likely to win at craps, but the house is still strong.

“It might work out. We might have a wet winter. But in the field of climate science, there is no way we know for sure,” Halpert said.

Patzert says six of 10 years in Southern California have been dry years. Most likely that will continue. “I think everybody better toughen up and plan for another year of drought,” he said.

Plan for the worst but hope for the best. It is a maxim meteorologist and water managers have espoused during this prolonged drought.

Adan Ortega is a 30-year veteran on water issues, a member of the board of a grass-roots water-saving group Sustainable Conservation and former member of the State Board of Food and Agriculture. He says California should follow “a no regrets path.”

“We need to do some things that are more serious,” he said.

“The environmental community for example, needs to do to the lawn what we did to the plastic bag,” Ortega said.