Some communities in California just experienced the driest February ever, and there’s around an 80 percent chance the state will enter a full-blown drought this year. 

If that happens, it could be the third-driest year in over a century, according to modeling by the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. 

But even though around a quarter of California is undergoing moderate drought conditions experts say it’s too early to panic — they say a second year of drought is where things get dicey. 

“The first year of a drought is really mostly a wake-up call,” said Jay Lund, the center’s director. “It will be prudent, if this turns out to be a dry year, for us to prepare for it to be a longer drought.”

But Lund says to not overlook that California’s climate is variable. Droughts are normal, but with climate change they're intensifying — as the state saw during the previous drought from 2011 to 2017

Possible rain in March and April is unlikely to save California from a dry year, Lund says. But he says to remember there's a weak chance that a “Miracle March” could help. 

In 1991, during the fourth year of a drought, there were three times the average rain and snow during March, Lund recalled. 

But some climatologists, like UCLA’s Daniel Swain, have said that, despite the forecast of light precipitation over the next few weeks, “models are unfortunately painting a continued drier-than-average picture for spring 2020.”

February was very dry in California. So far, there has only been about 51 percent of the average amount of seasonal rain in the Sacramento Valley — and less in the San Joaquin and Tulare basins. But there is some hope on the horizon.

There was some light rain and snow in the Sierra Nevada this weekend. But the “next measurable amount of precipitation isn’t expected until later in the week,” according to Bill Rasch, science and operations officer for the National Weather Service in Sacramento. 

“Hopefully that will open the storm doors, but it’s just a little too far to tell if it will lead to more rain,” he said.

A high-pressure system sitting over the Pacific is blocking storms before penetrating inland California and pushing them north over the Pacific Northwest, missing the state. This storm deflector is similar to what helped cause the 2011-17 drought. 

“People are wondering are we ever going to see rain again and I want to point out every winter California experiences a three to six week dry spell,” said Michelle Mead, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

“It does seem ominous, but it is something that we have seen before,” she said.

When it comes to the Sierra Nevada, the snowpack dropped from 92 percent of normal in January to 46 percent for March. 

“We didn’t quite get the results we had hoped for and we will most likely end this year below average,” said Sean de Guzman, chief of snow surveys and water forecasting section of the California Department of Water Resources at the Feb 27 snow survey. 

But State Climatologist Mike Anderson said there’s a glimmer of hope in that reservoir levels statewide are around 104 percent of average for this time of year. 

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