Sierra Snowpack Shows El Niño Not as Beastly as Billed

The blame for California’s below-average snowpack was placed Wednesday at the feet of a largely impotent El Niño, which failed to deliver the powerful storms forecasters expected.

Snow surveyors for the California Department of Water Resources found that the water content of the Sierra snow is only 87 percent of the historical average for this time of year. That’s a bug drop from January when the “frozen water supply,” as it is called by hydrologists, was well above normal.