Critical Sierra Survey Finds Healthy Snowpack – But No ‘Drought Buster’

After years of drought and months of speculation about how much precipitation a strong El Niño weather pattern would bring, the results are in:

We’ve had a roughly average year. On about this date last year, Gov. Jerry Brown stood in a dry field near Lake Tahoe and announced that he would require California’s urban water districts to cut use by 25 percent. Snowpack on that day was roughly 5 percent of normal.