The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is the deepest it’s been in decades, but those storms that were a boon for Northern California won’t make much of a dent in the long-term water shortage for the Colorado River Basin — an essential source of supplies for Southern California.

In fact, the recent storms haven’t changed a view shared by many Southern California water managers: Don’t expect lakes Mead and Powell, the nation’s largest reservoirs, to fill up again anytime soon.

“To think that these things would ever refill requires some kind of leap of faith that I, for one, don’t have,” said Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University.