(NVR) - Remember the drought? It’s surprisingly easy to forget that this time two years ago, we were staring at a really terrifying situation. It had barely rained for three years. Reservoirs statewide were at unprecedentedly low levels, the state’s mountains has shed their white coats of snow and were down to bare granite, and governments were under huge pressure to cut water usage any way they could.

Even here in Napa County, we were facing unusual restrictions on lawn watering, car washing, and even getting water in restaurants.

With the exception of American Canyon, which is entirely dependent on imported water, Napa County has always been fairly lucky – we have decent groundwater supplies that held steady during the drought and we had just enough rain to keep our reservoirs out of the danger zone.

Still, at this same point two years ago, Napa County was well within the area rated as in “Extreme drought,” the second highest level of drought, by the U.S. Drought Monitor, a multi-agency federal group monitoring water supplies nationwide. That extreme region extended all the way to the Oregon border. The areas of the state in “Exceptional drought,” the worst possible drought condition, included almost all of the Central Coast, Southern California, the Central Valley and most of the Sierras.