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The results of the annual California snow survey are in. Despite the huge increase from one year ago, snowpack is still below average for this time of year. This is a disappointing outcome after what seemed to be the best possible scenario for the state — a very strong El Niño festering in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

Every month from January to May, a survey team from the California Department of Water Resources hikes to Phillips Station, high in the Sierra Mountains east of Sacramento.

A nearly average spring snowpack in the Sierra Nevada will likely prolong tough water conservation measures in drought-stricken California – although the restrictions could be loosened in some areas after an El Nino storm system drenched the northern half of the state this winter, officials said.

“The message is still very strong: Conservation measures are still going to be important,” Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Survey Program, said Wednesday after he trudged through the snow to manually measure the snowpack at nearly 95 percent of normal.

State drought surveyors will trudge through deep snow Wednesday to manually measure what could be close to a normal Sierra Nevada snowpack for this time of year.

A year ago, Gov. Jerry Brown stood on the same spot — then a dusty patch of ground with no snow — to announce that the dire drought required residents to cut back water use by 25 percent. Statewide, the snowpack was then at 5 percent, marking a record low.

With just weeks left in California’s rainy season, El Niño has distributed uneven relief to an arid state. As a result, regulators must consider lifting state water restrictions that took effect last April in some places and not in others, the Chronicle explains.

“February was incredibly warm and dry,” David Pierce, a researcher at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, recalled to the Atlantic earlier this month. “If you look at the curves of El Niño, February to April is when we see rainy years differentiate themselves. It’s already March. There’s another six weeks of wet season, then that’s all she wrote.”