Storms in early 2017 pushed rainfall totals above normal throughout Southern California.
Lake Casitas, which supplies water to the Ojai Valley and parts of Ventura, dropped to 38 percent full by last week.
“One moderately good year was not enough to get us out of the drought,” said Ron Merckling, conservation manager for the Casitas Municipal Water District, which manages the manmade reservoir.
But then the rain started.
Much of Ventura County had 120 to 150 percent of normal in the 2016-17 rain year, which ended Sept. 30.
Cooler waters at the equator could be pointing to La Niña, a pattern that typically means a dry winter and that Pazert calls "the diva of drought."
That warm water — also there last winter — could be an incubator for atmospheric rivers.