State climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon is not quite ready to say the historic, five-year drought is over, but he’s close.

Statewide, drought conditions are disappearing, thanks to plenty of rain, though a few pockets of drought remain, including the Hill Country counties of Kerr and Gillespie.

To declare the drought over, Nielsen-Gammon said Tuesday, reservoirs would need to return to normal or get closer to it. That could happen soon as heavy rains have swamped vast areas of the state, with more on the way.

The Palmer Drought Severity Index, one of several benchmarks used to measure droughts, classifies Texas as green or white, meaning the state is at about normal or above-normal moisture.

The U.S. Drought Monitor, as of May 5, reported 7 percent of the state in extreme or exceptional drought. That’s likely to improve when it is updated Thursday, Nielsen-Gammon said.

In most of the San Antonio region, rainfall started climbing in November and stands almost 6 inches above average so far this year.

The Edwards Aquifer has been rising, and recently the monitoring well in Bexar County reached as high as 654 feet above sea level. It stayed high enough that the Edwards Aquifer Authority on May 1 eased pumping limits to Stage 1, a 20 percent cut in use, the lightest restriction possible during a drought. Last August, the persistent drought caused pumping to be cut by 40 percent

Still, the aquifer has to gain almost 20 feet to reach its historical average for May.

As Nielsen-Gammon said, reservoirs take longer to recover once rainfall picks up. Medina Lake, northwest of San Antonio, is still only 4.5 percent full.

At the worst point of the drought, which started to take hold in 2010, the lake had almost vanished.