NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – The year 2016 has brought amounts of snow and rain to California that many have hoped would break the drought, but the latest snowpack measurements show the state is not out of the cycle of dry years just yet.
Snowpack – especially across the northern, central and southern Sierras – is a critical measure of California's water supply.
State officials said that, in normal years, the snowpack supplies about 30 percent of California’s water needs as it melts in the spring and early summer.
As a result, the Department of Water Resources reported that, the greater the snowpack water content, the greater the likelihood California’s reservoirs will receive ample runoff as the snowpack melts to meet the state’s water demand in the summer and fall.
On Wednesday, the Department of Water Resources' manual snow survey at Phillips Station, east of Sacramento in the Sierra Nevada, showed that the snowpack was at 87 percent of the March 30 historical average.
“While for many parts of the state there will be both significant gains in both reservoir storage and stream flow, the effects of previous dry years will remain for now,” said Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, whose team conducted the Wednesday manual snow survey.
The below-average snowpack now is a concern because it's at this time of year that California’s statewide snowpack usually reaches its peak depth and water content, the Department of Water Resources reported.
From this point on, officials explained the snow begins to melt as the sun’s path across the sky moves a little further north each day.
While not ideal, the snowpack conditions measured this week are much improved compared to those reported last year, when Gov. Jerry Brown went to Phillips Station where there was no snow to measure – just bare ground – and announced that he was mandating a 25-percent reduction in water use throughout California.
At that point, the Sierras' snowpack water content was only 5 percent of normal – the lowest since 1950, officials said.
On Friday, the California Cooperative Snow Surveys measurements showed that the statewide snowpack summary was at 86 percent of normal for April 1, with 24.2 inches of snow water equivalent.
That breaks down as follows for the three regions of the Sierra: north, 95 percent of average, 27.4 inches of snow water equivalent; central, 88 percent of average, 25.1 inches of snow water equivalent; and south, 73 percent of average, 19.4 inches of snow water equivalent.
Closer to home, at Anthony Peak in the Mendocino National Forest's Covelo Ranger District, the March snowpack measurement was at 46 percent of normal, the highest snowpack number since May of 2011 and the best March snowpack measurement since 2002, according to California Department of Water Resources data.
As for Lake County's key water measurement – the depth of Clear Lake – the lake's depth late Friday was at 7.70 feet Rumsey. A full lake is 7.56 feet Rumsey.
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