You'd think after the rains of this winter that the drought might be completely behind us, but it is not — and, counterintuitively, much of the Bay Area is still officially "abnormally dry" by federal Drought Monitor standards.

We aren't out of the drought yet, and we won't be unless January, February, and March are as ridiculously rainy as December was. But most of California and the Bay Area is officially out of 'exceptional drought' status.

We're once again going to be having conversations this summer about water use, and hearing about ever more strict mandates coming down from counties and the state about what we use water for. But is San Francisco's household water use really the problem?

SF may be "yellow" on the COVID reopening map, but a different map has us in the "red." Just two weeks after categorizing the region as being in a "severe" drought, the U.S. Drought Monitor has updated its map and put the entire Bay Area in the second-worst category for drought conditions.