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Much-needed mountain snow and rain returned to California this winter, but fell short of expectations amid a super El Niño.

The official snow season for California’s Sierra Nevada came to an end at the start of April on a below-normal note and one that AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Ken Clark called “disappointing.” The amount of water stored in the snow for the entire mountain chain averaged 14 percent below normal on April 1, according to the California Cooperative Snow Surveys.

A federal judge dismissed an environmental lawsuit challenging California’s now-dismantled emergency salinity barrier across a channel of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in response to the drought.
U.S. District Judge Lawrence O’Neill ruled on March 31 that the complaint from the Center for Environmental Science, Accuracy and Reliability (CESAR) is moot.
The 750-foot-wide rock barrier was built in May 2015 as a temporary fix to prevent additional saltwater from fouling freshwater supplies to approximately 25 million people, according to the defendant California Department of Water Resources.

Poised to ease California’s mandatory drought rules after rebounding rain and snow levels this winter, state water officials on Monday made it clear that — even where reservoirs are 100 percent full — no community is likely to get an entirely free pass from conservation targets this summer.

“One average year does not mean that we can forget about saving water,” said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board. “We don’t want to let our guard down.”

March 2016 has been unusually wet, and quite a contrast to February.  The “Godzilla” El Nino this year has been a bit “Gonzo”, but overall has brought a welcome above average precipitation for northern California, after four solid drought years.  The unevenness of the precipitation is some concern, and the depth of remaining surface and subsurface storage drawdown from the drought remains sizable.

Annual precipitation and snowpack are now about average overall for California.  The largest reservoirs in northern California are in good shape, with sizable, about average, snowpacks waiting to trickle down in spring.