Snowfall from 67% to 161%: Huge shift in California drought

FILE - In this Jan. 3, 2017, file photo, Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program for the Department of Water Resources, plunges the survey tube into the snowpack as he conducts the first snow survey of the season at Phillips Station near Echo Summit, Calif. More than 40 percent of California has emerged from a punishing drought that covered the whole state a year ago, federal drought-watchers said Thursday, Jan. 12, a stunning transformation caused by an unrelenting series of storms in the North that filled lakes, overflowed rivers and buried mountains in snow. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File) (The Associated Press)

FILE - In this April 1, 2015 file photo, Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program for the Department of Water Resources, and Gov. Jerry Brown walk across a dry meadow that is usually covered in several inches of snow to conduct a snow survey, near Echo Summit, Calif. More than 40 percent of California has emerged from a punishing drought that covered the whole state a year ago, federal drought-watchers said Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017 a stunning transformation caused by an unrelenting series of storms in the North that filled lakes, overflowed rivers and buried mountains in snow. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File) (The Associated Press)

SAN FRANCISCO – Recent storms bearing some of the heaviest snow and rain to hit Northern California in decades have helped bring a dramatic turnaround after more than five years of drought, which covered the state just a year ago.

Here are key numbers to know as the record dry spell eases:

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35 INCHES

Total rain in the last 10 days along California's central coast, according to the National Weather Service

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67 PERCENT

Snowfall in the Sierra Nevada as a percent of average on Jan. 3, according to the weather service

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161 PERCENT

Snowfall in the same mountains as a percent of average on Thursday

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-8 MILLION

Amount of water California's reservoirs were off the average, by acre-feet, or annual supplies for a household, in 2015

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+1.2 MILLION

Amount of water the reservoirs were off the average in January 2017, according to Jay Lund at the University of California, Davis

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2 YEARS

How many years' worth of normal rainfall was missing from the worst-hit parts of California ahead of January's storms, according to hydrologist Claudia Faunt of the U.S. Geological Survey

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174 MPH

Blizzard winds in Sierra Nevada on Jan. 8, measured at Squaw Valley, according to the weather service