SAN FRANCISCO - California experienced one of its driest Januarys on record, a worrisome development for a state that relies on winter rain and snow for its water supplies.

The unusually dry weather is stirring anxiety among some farmers and water managers, but California's water supplies are still healthy, thanks to heavy storms last winter that filled the state's reservoirs.

The state's snowpack is 57 percent below normal levels, and the Sierra Nevada only saw about 17 percent of its normal precipitation in January, said Elissa Lynn, senior meteorologist at the state Department of Water Resources.

But water levels in the state's reservoirs are still slightly above average because the state got 20 percent more precipitation than average last year.

"We may have a dry year overall, but our reservoir storage is in great shape from last year," Lynn said. "From the state water storage perspective, it's not a drought."

Water agencies around the state are closely monitoring water supplies and hope that February and March will make up for the precipitation shortfall, said Jennifer Persike, spokeswoman for the Association of California Water Agencies, which represents 450 public water agencies in the state.

Still, Persike said, "we're not panicking."

But for Central Valley farmers, the dry spell marks its latest battle with Mother Nature. Last spring brought floods, the summer scorched fields with triple-digit heat and a recent cold snap destroyed much of the state's $1 billion citrus crop.

While most of the state's crops are irrigated, wheat, barley, oats and grasses that depend on rainfall are suffering.

Hay farmers in the Imperial Valley lost their first cutting due to dry weather, a problem that will impact those growers as well as cattle ranchers looking for hay to feed animals on parched rangeland, said Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Wheat growers in Riverside County may not even be able to plant this year, said Bonnie Fernandez, executive director of the Woodland-based California Wheat Commission.

"It's starting to be a concern," Fernandez said. "It's too soon to tell what that's going to mean long-term, but we're at the point where we need to know whether to irrigate."

Cherry farmers in Northern California are worried that rainstorms come later in the season, which could hurt cherry trees already in bloom and reduce the crop size.

The lack of rainfall could also be leading to more wildfires, including a recent blaze that destroyed multimillion dollar homes in Malibu, said Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

"It's very atypical to have a January fire," Edmiston said. "Typically you can put your fire gear away by mid-December. Up until a couple days ago, we were on fire deployment."

Kimball Garrett, who oversees the ornithology department at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, said they won't know the extent of the damage to the bird population until spring. But he predicted the lack of rain would lead to less vegetation, resulting in the lower breeding success of many species of birds.

California typically gets about 80 percent of its rainfall during the winter, but cities statewide reported significantly less than that in January, according to Brian Tentinger, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Monterey.

Sacramento recorded its driest January since it began keeping records more than 150 years ago. The city only saw 0.07 inches of rain - less than 2 percent of its 4.15 inches it typically gets in January.

"It's weird," said George Cline, a NWS forecaster in Sacramento. "Usually January is a wet and cloudy month. It's been clear and dry and cold."

San Francisco, which usually gets 4.45 inches of rain in January, has only gotten 0.65 inches, making it the city's fifth driest January in the past 150 years.

Fresno in California's Central Valley has reported 0.59 inches, down significantly from the 2.16 inches it normally sees in January.

Los Angeles recorded 0.19 inches of rain, compared with the 3.33 inches it sees in an average year. The city is on track to having its driest year ever, receiving only about 20 percent of the rainfall it expects at this time of year, said Jamie Meier, an NWS meteorologist in Oxnard.

A high pressure ridge has blocked storms from reaching California over the past month, and no storms are expected for at least a week. But forecasters said there's still time for California to catch up.

"I wouldn't worry too much just yet," Tentinger said. "You can make up for rainfall fairly quickly."

- Associated Press writers Olivia Munoz in Fresno and Noaki Schwartz in Los Angeles contributed to this report.