WILLIAM BRANGHAM: After a barrage of punishing and sometimes deadly winter storms lashed California with rain and snow, the clouds now appear to be parting in perhaps revealing a silver lining.

California, like much of the American West has been suffering through a brutal drought.

But now 12 of California's 17 major reservoirs have been replenished, and are currently above their historical averages for the start of spring.

But officials are also warning that when the enormous snowpack that's accumulated atop the Sierra Nevada Mountains starts to melt, that runoff could cause a new threat to those living below.

Hayley Smith covers all of this for the Los Angeles Times.

And she joins us now.

Hayley Smith, thank you so much for being here.

Could you just tell us, give us a sense of the damage that this string of storms caused California?

I mean, our recovery efforts and rebuilding efforts still underway?

HAYLEY SMITH, Reporter, Los Angeles Times: Yes, recovery efforts are still underway.

This has really been a remarkable winter.

Going into this season, we were on the tail end of the state's driest three years on record.

And then as you said, the skies opened up.

We saw widespread flooding.

We saw levee breaches, we saw landslides and sinkholes, property damage, nearly three dozen people have died.

So it's been a pretty challenging winter for us in that regard so far.

And so as of right now, there are still people that don't have access to their homes, there are still evacuated communities, places that are underwater, people that have lost their livelihoods due to flooded farm fields or infrastructure challenges.

So we have a lot of work to do just to dig out from this winter, even though thankfully, it seems like the storm systems have stopped.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I want to touch on this issue of the drought.

And I'm going to put up these images.

This is from the U.S. Drought Monitor, which shows how bad it was.

This is back in December.

You see California has nearly all red, but just a few months later, that red is all gone.

Does all of this moisture that has fallen on California mean that California's water woes are largely over?

HAYLEY SMITH: Yes and no.

There is no denying that this has made a huge difference and significantly ease drought conditions across the state.

As you mentioned, just three months ago, we saw most of the state in severe and extreme exceptional drought.

People were under water conservation orders, officials were saying they barely had enough supplies for health and safety of millions of people.

So now our reservoirs are fuller, our snowpack is much healthier.

But there are still parts of the state that are experiencing drought and water scarcity issues.

And then on top of that, the long-term climate trend in California is toward hotter and drier even though we did get this sort of burst of water this winter.

And so because of that I don't think officials will ever officially declare the drought over.

We need to continue to plan for future dry times.

We need to continue to invest in infrastructure and ways to capture and store and convey water in the state.

So -- and we need to keep our ethos of conservation.

So, I don't think they're going to ever fully declare the drought over for those reasons.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I know that you recently visited and spoke to officials that the biggest reservoir in Southern California Diamond Valley Lake, what are the officials they're telling you about this future?

HAYLEY SMITH: The head of the Metropolitan Water District actually put it so well, he said, nature gave us a lifeline.

So Diamond Valley Lake is, as you mentioned, the largest reservoir in Southern California.

And you can kind of think of it like a savings account, where during this really harsh period of drought, we were drawing down and really using almost half of it just to get by.

And so now with these storms, they've been able to turn the taps back on and start refilling Diamond Valley Lake.

So that just gives everyone a little bit of breathing room and lets us breathe a sigh of relief so that the next time it does get dry again, we will have replenish that savings account and we can lean on it when we need to.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Speaking of California's bank accounts, I mean, that snowpack that I mentioned that's in the Sierra Nevada has, that too, is another one of these bank accounts that Californians and Californian farmers rely on.

But there is this concern that all of that snow might melt too quickly and at the wrong times.

What is the principal worry there?

HAYLEY SMITH: Some of my colleagues at the Times actually calculated the amount of water contained in the state snowpack right now is about 30-million-acre feet, which is more than the capacity of Lake Mead, the lake -- the nation's largest reservoir.

And so eventually what's going to happen is as this weather starts to heat up, as we start to maybe see some heat waves or strings of 80-, 90- and 100-degree weather, all of that snowpack is going to come down at some point.

And that's going to potentially create significant flooding.

It's going to put pressures on our rivers and streams and dams and tributaries.

So unfortunately, we now have to prepare for more flooding in the spring as all of that snowpack melts.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Hayley Smith of the Los Angeles Times.

Thank you so much for being here.

HAYLEY SMITH: Sure.

Thanks for having me.