By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee

California’s winter storms come in two varieties – cold ones from the Gulf of Alaska and warm ones that pick up moisture from more tropical portions of the Pacific Ocean.

Dan Walters

The cold ones dump lots of snow, while the warm ones bring rain, sometimes torrential rain.

Those who believe in inexorable climate change tell us that in the future, Californians will see less snow and more warm storms, such as those that whipped through Northern California over the weekend.

The storms dumped copious amounts of rain, providing respite, if not relief, from the state’s prolonged drought.

Operators of the big state and federal reservoirs – Shasta, Oroville and Folsom – lowered their discharges to a minimum in hopes of maximizing the capture of storm runoff and all remained in that operational mode Monday. As a result, all were seeing their water storage, which had dropped to ominously low levels, rise.

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