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California’s Tulare Lake was once the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi. It was shallow, and it varied in size from year to year and season to season. But it was home to lots of salmon, turtles, otters and even, in the latter half of the 19th century, a few schooners and steamboats. It was also at the heart of a 400,000-acre network of lakes and wetlands (“the river of the lakes,” the painter and naturalist John W. Audubon — John J.’s son — called it in 1849) that in wet years overflowed into the San Joaquin River to the north, making it possible to travel by boat from Bakersfield to San Francisco.

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) conducts five manual snow surveys at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada from around the first of January through May each calendar year. The snowpack’s water content usually peaks around April 1, after which the sun’s higher position in the sky contributes to rapid melting and a diminished snowpack. DWR’s May 1 survey will be the last one of 2017. Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, will conduct the survey beginning at 11 a.m. just off Highway 50 near Sierra-at-Tahoe Road, about 90 miles east of Sacramento.

The damage has been done and the repair contract awarded. Yet more than two months after damaged spillways at the Oroville Dam prompted authorities to order the evacuation of 188,000 people, the question of who will ultimately pay the bill remains murky. How much will be the responsibility of homeowners, businesses, farmers and other customers of the more than two dozen local and regional agencies that contract with the State Water Project?

California needs an average of three atmospheric rivers annually to reach its average yearly rainfall. So far this year, the state has seen an incredible 46 atmospheric rivers. This intense rainfall has pushed much of California out of longstanding drought conditions. California Ag Today spoke with Steve Johnson, a private meteorologist for farmers in California. We discussed atmospheric rivers (AR) and the abundance of rain California has seen in late winter and early spring.