The latest statewide snowpack measurement from the California Department of Water Resources is another indication that the tremendously wet winter might have been too much of a good thing.
The agency’s readings from 130 snow sensors placed throughout the Sierra Nevada show the snowpack’s snow-water equivalent is 61.1 inches, or 237 percent of average for April 1.
The snow-water equivalent measures the amount of water held within the snowpack.
“This year’s result will go down as one of the largest snowpack years on record in California,” said Sean de Guzman, manager of DWR’s Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Unit.
Only in 1952, 1969 and 1983 were statewide measurements above 200 percent of the April 1 average.
The DWR measurements come from three main Sierra Nevada regions, with the Southern Sierra snowpack currently at 300 percent of average, its largest ever, while the Central Sierra is at 237 percent of average and Northern Sierra, where the state’s largest reservoirs are, is at 192 percent of average.
Due to the huge amount of rain and snow that fell since December, when water managers were still expecting a fourth year of punishing drought, DWR increased its estimated State Water Project deliveries to 75 percent in March, up from 35 percent in February.
Also, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order eliminating more than 50 of the 81 drought emergency provisions that he enacted in April 2021, including the 15 percent statewide voluntary water conservation goal and the requirement that roughly 450 local water agencies enact their own drought emergency plans.
While the monstrous snow measurement is good news for drought relief and for the state’s drinking water supply, reservoir managers and emergency response agencies throughout California are bracing for widespread flood risks — particularly in the San Joaquin Valley and the Tulare Lake Bains — as the spring snowmelt looms.
“This year’s severe storms and flooding is the latest example that California’s climate is becoming more extreme,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth.
“After the driest three years on record and devastating drought impacts to communities across the state, DWR has rapidly shifted to flood response and forecasting for the upcoming snowmelt. We have provided flood assistance to many communities who just a few months ago were facing severe drought impacts,” Nemeth said in a news release Monday.
The water agency has tentatively scheduled another snow survey in May.
13 comments
I wonder how many victims of flood damage have flood insurance?
Ah Yup, Bethel Island may nee water wings . . . . .
.
https://water.weather.gov/ahps/region.php?rfc=cnrfc
.
Reservoirs are already holding quite a bit of water
https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=RES
Even has Nevada, Well Folks
If only we had built reservoirs to collect some of this water ….
Who would have thought?
It’s more important to have snow and water.Why is it always negative talk.
And a few years from now, we will be bone dry again, moaning that it’s not the politicians’ fault, it’s climate change.
Build more reservoirs. Incentivize the collection and storage of rainwater from rooftops into cisters. More and better pipelines and aqueducts to transport water north and south to compensate for uneven seasonal precipitation. Climate change models are all over the place, but they mostly predict a decline of snow over the coming decades, with more of the precipitation coming as rain. That means we need more storage, because we can’t count on snowpack as secondary storage.
The fact is, the modern left sees humanity as a stain on mother Gaia, and it needs to be squeezed and restrained. Building and expanding is the opposite of that, so it will never happen under the current CA reality, at least not at the scale it needs to to meet the requirements of a prosperous first world people.
.
Would it be a surprise if some left wing state legislator proposed a “flood mitigation fee” bases on annual rainfall?
.
Yeah, I didnt think so.
.
The geoengineers are going back to their drawing boards because they may have overdone it this time and the elite corporate community may lose some money because of it. Maybe better to leave such things up to nature?
.. so what is Newscum doing to capture run off to possibly use it as groundwater replenishment? …. crickets?
nothing … nothing at all.
He is too busy traveling the country to visit Republican states on the California Tax Payer dime to try and position himself for a run at the presidency. He does not care about us … we are not his problem anymore … he got his dictatorship because too many people in this state believe the words that are coming out of his mouth.
How many of you who get water from the district in those giant containers saved any of the rain for your gardens when the storms end? There ARE things that WE can do, we don’t always have to gripe about what the state is or isn’t doing. Just saying…..
Watch 1974 movie China Town. This was a movie that should have been classified as a true story because it is true.
We can’t waste money building reservoirs….. we need high speed rail!
There are more important issues that we need to focus on such as: Climate Change, Jan 6 insurrection, Abortion Rights, Trump indictment, and of course Transgender issues.
Comments are closed.