A wet January made it easy for Californians to conserve water.

Californians’ monthly water conservation was 20.5 percent in January, an increase from the 17.2 percent savings in January 2016.

“Californians continue to conserve despite the wet weather in many areas,” said State Water Board Chair Felicia Marcus. “This ongoing effort is important rain or shine for all sorts of reasons, in light of the greater extremes we can expect with climate change and increasingly weird weather.  We’re going to need to use all our tools including conservation and efficiency, water recycling, stormwater capture, and storing water above and below ground in wet times to get us through the dry times to deal with the Mack truck of climate change that has already arrived.”

In February, the board extended its existing water conservation regulations. Gov. Jerry Brown has said he will reconsider the regulations this spring.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report