Good news for California's historic drought
The water content of the critically important Sierra Nevada snowpack surges beyond its recent record low.
'It's a start' »
Official: California snowpack at 136 percent of normal
By RICH PEDRONCELLI and SCOTT SMITH
23 hours ago
After four years of drought, Gehrke plunged a measuring pole into a thick field of snow in the Central Sierra, which includes Lake Tahoe. His survey followed an electronic measurement last week that put the water content of the snowpack at 112 percent of normal. Even more snow has fallen since then.
The snowpack provides about 30 percent of California's water supply during the months when it melts and rushes through rivers and streams to fill reservoirs that remain critically low.
Last Jan. 1, the snowpack was a meager 45 percent of the historical average. On April 1, it had dropped to a record low of 5 percent.
Gehrke said snow must continue falling through April for him to feel confident the drought is easing.
"There's going to be those anxious moments when we start to get into a week, a week-and-a-half with no snow," he said.
A
brewing El Nino system — a warming in the Pacific Ocean that alters
weather worldwide — is expected to impact California and the rest of the
nation in the coming months, according to a NASA report released
Tuesday.
Its effects on
California's drought are hard to predict, but Jet Propulsion Laboratory
climatologist Bill Patzert said it should bring some relief. El Ninos in
the early 1980s and late 1990s brought about twice as much rain as
normal, he said.
The weather also caused mudslides, flooding and high surf in Southern California.
"The
water story for much of the American West over most of the past decade
has been dominated by punishing drought," Patzert said. "Now, we're
preparing to see the flip-side of nature's water cycle — the arrival of
steady, heavy rains and snowfall."
Forecasters expect a light to moderate storm system in Northern California early next week.
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