Tag Archive for: Sierra Snowpack

California Snow Drought Ends in Dramatic Fashion, While Other States Still Deal with Shortage

/in , , /by /CNNby Allison Chinchar
Thanks to multiple atmospheric river events, average snowpack in California has gone from 18% to 98% in just two weeks.
“Increases in snowpack of this size are not common, but also not unprecedented,” Julie Kalansky, deputy director of operations for the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E), explained.
Kalansky pointed out previous studies have shown a jump on this scale can happen about twice every three years, but usually over the course of an entire winter, not just the month of December. While they don’t have the exact rankings for each month of the year, “most of the storm events in the study we referenced for the above calculation were in the second half of December and later into the season,” Kalansky added.
The sudden change gives California its wettest start to the Water Year in more than 40 years, thanks to several drought-denting rain and snow systems pushing through the area in recent weeks. The Water Year runs from October 1 through September 30 of the following year.
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Despite Rainfall, State Still Aiming for 55 Gallon Per Person Water Conservation Target

/in , , /by /GV Wireby Jim Jakobs

Fresh off a week filled with rain and snow due to an atmospheric river, water conservation may not be top of mind for everyday Californians.

NBC Bay Area Meteorologist Rob Mayeda just broke down some figures from this latest storm. In a Friday tweet he says, “Sierra Snowpack Surge: Up to 66% of average from just 40% one week ago. Biggest rains for the Central and Southern Sierra.”

While the recent precipitation may make the 2011-2017 California drought seem like a distant memory, a couple of laws passed by the legislature at that time are set to rain down policy on water agencies throughout the state.

Starting in November of 2023, California will enact a statewide indoor water use standard of 55 gallons per person per day. Local water agencies could be fined $10,000 a day by the state if they fail to meet the standard.

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Snow-Water Equivalent Still Down Despite Recent Storms

/in , , /by /Enterprise Recordby Jake Hutchison

Though the last couple of weekends have seen wet weather, it hasn’t been enough to keep up with the yearly average in time for summer in California. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which is tested regularly by employees of the California Department of Water Resources, has yielded some grim results so far in 2020 in terms of snow-water equivalent.

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Opinion: A Week of Rain is Nice, but Does Virtually Nothing to Help L.A.’s Water Issues

/in , /by /Los Angeles Times by The Times Editorial Board

Southern California’s March rain is a welcome relief, coming as it does after a mostly dry January and an absolutely desiccated February. Los Angeles, like much of the rest of the state, had been in drought and was getting by without severe conservation measures only because of reservoirs still brimming from the soaking winter of 2017 and a succession of moderately wet follow-ups.

We have a name for late winter storms that come at the end of mostly failed rainy seasons. We call them March Miracles. The granddaddy of them all came in 1991, when California was facing a desperate water shortage only to be hit by a late-March Sierra blizzard that packed a whole season’s worth of moisture into three days.

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Sierra Snowpack Withering in California’s Dry Winter. New Satellite Image Shows the Bad News

/in , , /by /The Sacramento Bee by Dale Kasler

The image is disturbing and leaves little doubt about California’s growing predicament: The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is a sad whisper of it was a year ago, a withering testament to the lack of precipitation in the state’s increasingly dry winter.

The National Weather Service tweeted satellite images of the Sierra on Tuesday, showing the stark difference between this year and the above-average snowfall from 2019. The mountain snowpack — a crucial element in the state’s annual water supply — is 53 percent of normal for this time of year, according to the Department of Water Resources.

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California’s Wet Again, The Snowpack Looks Good and Ski Resorts Are Happy. Will It Last?

/in , , /by /Sacramento Beeby Ryan Sabalow

Just a few weeks ago, it was one of the driest starts to the rainy season in modern California history. PG&E was shutting off power to tens of thousands of Californians as dangerously dry fire weather dragged on nearly to Thanksgiving.

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Sierra Snowpack Off to Healthiest Start Since 2010, Water Officials Say

/in , , /by /KGO TV San Francisco by News Staff

The Sierra snowpack is off to its best start in years, according to the California Department of Water Resources. Thanks to all the recent storms, it’s at 109 percent of where it should be for this time of year. Last year, it was at 82 percent of average.

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