Her, and that's guiding the decisions being made by the Department of Water Resources as KTVU is Tom Vacar crunched some very interesting data that depends on conservation. >> So far, this rainy season, the Department of Water Resources says California's water year is off to a relatively dry start, with October and November. State climatologist Michael Anderson. Now we've seen so far through the fall. >> Pretty dry year. Only about half of the precip we would expect by now. >> UC Merced, Center of Watershed Sciences expert agrees . >> Average snow water content is much lower. The precipitation is much lower than average for this time of the year. So that's where we are. >> So last week the department announced that its customers who served 27 million Californians will get only 10% of their water rights. The reason the department's not sure it will be able to guarantee more until it knows how much more rain and snow will fall this year. Officials further say they're hopeful that this El Nino pattern will generate wet weather. But that it may not. >> When we look at the outcomes of the seven events in the 21st century, we they've been all over the board. We've had two dry years, two wet years. And three near average years for the southern portion of California. >> Historically, it has generally meant that there have not been dry years. The relationship between El Nino and Northern California is not very consistent and there's a lot of variability from year to year. >> We find ourselves in a rather unique position in here for the 21st century and that we're above average in our reservoir storage for this time of year. The good news is, as of Tuesday, midnight, California's sixth largest mega reservoirs are sitting at almost 67% full. >> That's almost 120% of their average capacity on December 5th, exactly one year ago, with no promise, no inkling of an end to the long drought, those same reservoirs were just 30% full and only 52% of average on top of that, there's enough extra water to inject the equivalent of Lake Oroville. Huge capacity for underground storage. Having said all of that, now is no time to start splurging on our water supply because we simply do not know what the next 3 to 3 and a half months will bring in terms of water. But the good news is in the winter months, both residents and agriculture tend to use a lot less wa
