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Surveyors will plunge poles into the Sierra Nevada snowpack near Lake Tahoe on Tuesday, taking the season’s first measurement by hand of the snow’s water content as California flirts with a sixth year of drought. What they find in the snowpack between now and April 1 will guide state water managers in the nation’s most populous state that also leads in production of farming. Electronic monitors in late December showed the snowpack’s water content at just 72 percent of normal despite heavy rain. That figure dipped even lower during the holiday weekend.

 

The first snow survey of the season will take place in the Lake Tahoe area Tuesday morning. It’s viewed as a critical test of California’s water supply, after five years of drought. Surveyors will plunge poles into the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides roughly one third of California’s water. Tuesday’s snow survey comes amid hopes that the state’s water crisis may finally be coming to an end. There has been plenty of rain all across the state during the past three months. However, water experts say it is still way to early to declare an end to California’s long drought.

The first snowpack survey of 2017 found below average numbers on Tuesday. The Phillips station in El Dorado County reported just 53 percent of the average for this time of the year, according to the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). Here’s what Tuesday’s measurement means.The state is measuring the water content in the snowpack, which is essentially how much water exists if the snow were to melt instantaneously. The average for early-January is 11.3 inches. Tuesday’s measurement reported just 6 inches of water content.

The first manual survey this year of California’s snowpack revealed Tuesday that it holds about half as much water as normal, casting a shadow on the state that’s hoping to dodge a sixth straight year of drought, officials said. Surveyors, however, took the reading at 6,000 feet near Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada as major cold and windy storms were expected to dump four to five feet of snow through Thursday in areas above 4,500 feet in Northern and Central California, while mountain areas below that could get two to three feet, forecasters said.

A series of powerful storms is set to soak California over the next week, bringing heavy rains, flooding risk in some creeks and 10 feet or more of new snow to the Sierra Nevada — the latest sign that the stranglehold of the state’s five-year drought is significantly weakening. At least three storms are forecast to crash in from the Pacific Ocean, weather forecasters said Tuesday, dumping 3 to 4 inches of rain on most Bay Area cities by next Monday, and 8 to 10 inches in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Marin hills and Big Sur coast.