Molly White, Water Operations Manager for the State Water Project at the California Department of Water Resources, said atmospheric river storms have to led to near-record snowpack in many parts of the Sierra Nevada and reservoir storage is above average for this time of year.
With record and near-record snowpack up and down California, much of its multiyear drought has abated — but it’s never time to break out the balloons and party favors when it comes to water in the West.
During a California-Nevada U.S. Drought Monitoring Group seminar Monday, water experts were upbeat when talking about the massive snowpack, reservoirs spilling and more storms on the horizon.
Another atmospheric river system has set its sights on California, raising considerable concern about flooding and structural damage as warm rain is expected to fall atop the state’s near-record snowpack this week, forecasters say.
“It now appears increasingly likely that a potentially significant and very likely warm atmospheric river event will probably affect some portion of Northern or Central California sometime between about late Thursday and Saturday,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said during a briefing Monday.
