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Trends of warmer winter temperature in the Sierra Nevada are predicted to reduce local snowpack — western Nevada County’s most important source of water. In the future, precipitation increasingly will fall as rain instead of snow, scientists forecast. The impact of that shift on local water supply is dramatic. Nevada Irrigation District’s system for collecting water for local use — like other systems along the Sierra Nevada — was built on the assumption that wintertime precipitation would come as snow and stay in the mountains until the spring melt.

There’s a term for what’s going on right now in the Sierra Nevada and the mountains that feed the Colorado River. It’s called a “snow drought,” and Nevada climate scientists warn that Westerners had better get used to the phenomenon. https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/science-and-technology/nevada-researchers-warn-of-more-snow-droughts-even-in-wet-years/Periods of below-average snowpack have become increasingly common in some Western mountain ranges, and more frequent snow droughts are likely as global temperatures continue to rise, according to Benjamin Hatchett, a postdoctoral fellow in meteorology and climatology at the Desert Research Institute in Reno.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to drill two enormous tunnels to divert water to the Central Valley and Southern California should have been buried a long time ago. The $17 billion price is too high, as is the risk of an out-and-out water grab at the expense of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast. But the governor stubbornly resisted alternatives to his California WaterFix — until now.

Critics who say state water policy tilts too far toward Southern California got additional ammunition last week, when Gov. Jerry Brown named a new director to run his Department of Water Resources. New DWR Director Karla Nemeth is married to Tom Philp, an executive strategist with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Nemeth’s duties include overseeing the State Water Project, which delivers water from Northern California to the southern half of the state, and forging ahead with Brown’s controversial Delta tunnels project.