By Kiley Russell. Bay City News.
California's latest survey of snow levels in the Sierra Nevada shows the state continuing to make progress against a severe drought that appeared poised to extend into a fourth straight year in December.
The state Department of Water Resources (DWR) conducted its third snow survey of the season Friday at Phillips Station in El Dorado County in the Central Sierra.
The survey measured 116.5 inches of snow with a snow and water equivalent of 41.5 inches, which is 177 percent of average for the date of March 3, according to DWR.
Additionally, data collected from 130 snow sensors across the state shows that the statewide snowpack is currently at 190 percent of average with a snow water equivalent of 44.7 inches.
“There was a good indication that it was going to be the fourth year of drought,” state climatologist Michael Anderson said at a news conference Friday. “Then, after Christmas, something interesting happened: We started to see a pretty surprising set of a family of atmospheric rivers.”
In the three weeks following December 25, the state was hit by nine massive storms that struck particularly hard from the Bay Area to San Diego and across the central and southern Sierra Nevada.
A dry period then settled over the West until about a week ago, when the state again saw a “massive amount of precipitation” from a series of unusually cold storms coming out of the Gulf of Alaska, Anderson said.
The result is that, in addition to a snowpack that is second only to the record set in 1982-1983, the state is enjoying reservoir levels that are about 95 percent of normal for this time of year.
"Most are doing pretty well," said Jeanine Jones, DWR's interstate resources manager.
Conditions have improved so much, in fact, that the U.S. Drought Monitor still considers only about half the state to be in severe or moderate drought conditions, a big change from late January.
Improved hydrologic conditions prompted state water managers in February to set delivery forecasts of 35 percent of requested water supplies for the 29 public water agencies that draw water from the State Water Project, which serves 27 million people and 750,000 acres of agricultural land.
That's an increase of just 5.0 percent of the requested supplies for 2022.
In addition, the federally run Central Valley Project set deliveries for most urban and industrial water users at 75 percent of historical use, up from just 25 percent last year.
"Obviously, this is the year of the snow, so to speak," Jones said.
Still, he cautioned that while many reservoirs are performing well, Shasta and Trinity in the Northern Sierra are still below average and the Colorado River basin, which helps supply much of its water to Southern California, is drier than average, as are many of the state's important groundwater aquifers, particularly in the Central Valley.
“Where we’re not getting that recovery right away is in groundwater,” Jones said. “It just takes a long time for that to recover and for that data — about groundwater levels — to filter through.”
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