OT Just how bad is the drought? Just curious OT

...I am astonished to see how much grass remains planted all over the place, particularly in those "parkway strips" between the street and the sidewalk.....they seem to waste at least half of the water applied, to runoff. The potential, if we got rid of that excessive lawn, would be remarkable.

More than 6 billion gallons of water have poured into Lake Tahoe in less than two days, helping the lake begin to recover from four years of crushing drought.

Since midnight Monday, the lake has gone up 1.92 inches, the equivalent of 6.39 billion gallons of water, according to the National Weather Service. The water comes as a winter storm slams the Sierra, bringing several feet of snow to higher elevations and rain at lake level, which sits at roughly 6,223 feet.

Snowpack at Mt. Rose near Reno is at about 110 percent of normal for this date, a welcome change after several seasons of extreme drought throughout the Sierra Nevada.

In an anxiously watched rite of winter, state Department of Water Resources surveyor Frank Gehrke weighed a tube of snow at Echo Summit and found it held 16.3 inches of water, about 136 percent of the historical average for the site. To get to the site, he trudged through snow more than 4.5 feet deep -- about 1.5 feet deeper than average.

Soggy in Santa Monica. Of course I noticed a missing tile on my roof this morning after the dump had started.