Torrential California Rain On Pace to Solve Major Threat Facing State

Storms continue to drench California, but the onslaught has a silver lining amidst the loss.

Storms relentlessly battering the state are expected to continue into next week. Massive rain has brought a barrage of floods, mudslides and various weather conditions like hail and even tornadoes to California since last week. At least 19 people have died from the storms, and a report from AccuWeather expects the economic loss to cost as much as $33 billion, more than three times the damage of the nationwide arctic blast that plummeted many states into subzero conditions and caused a devastating, fatal blizzard in Buffalo, New York, in December.

However, the deluge poses to solve a major threat facing California for many years. In an updated map published by the U.S. Drought Monitor, much of California has been downgraded from the extreme drought category to severe or moderate drought categories.

The updated map shows only the northernmost tip of California suffering from extreme drought. In last week's drought map, 27 percent of the state suffered from extreme drought. The updated map shows now only .3 percent of California is under extreme drought conditions.

California has experienced nearly two decades of a megadrought that has plagued the West, which has contributed to massive wildfires across the state during peak dry season.

AccuWeather meteorologist Brandon Buckingham told Newsweek that the increased moisture may lead to a large bloom across the state in the spring, where brush, grasses and small shrubbery grow at an increased pace. The increased growth could lead to a higher number of short-term fuels that cause wildfires to spread more quickly. However, Buckingham said AccuWeather expects there to be one or two more chances for California rainfall in the spring, delaying the start of the wildfire season. As summer progresses, AccuWeather expects the climate to take an El Niño pattern, which means there may be an early start to the wet season along the west coast, cutting the wildfire season short.

But the rain has a downside, too.

"The beneficial rain and mountain snow are really coming at a cost," Buckingham told Newsweek. "It is coming so frequently and heavy that the soil and composition of the ground out in California can't handle it."

The Weather Channel meteorologist Scot Pilié shared an image of a drought monitor on Twitter Thursday morning that showed most of the Golden State had been removed from the extreme drought category.

"Still work to be done, but record-setting early season snowfall will help tremendously for water levels as well," Pilié tweeted.

An updated version of the drought monitor map is published each Thursday, and Buckingham expects California's drought situation to continue to improve over the next week.