Meltwater from snowfall in California’s mountains provides 30 percent of the state’s water needs in a normal year. The snowpack this year is vastly improved from a year ago, when it was 5 percent of average.
But at 87 percent, the equivalent of 24.4 inches of water, according to the state Department of Water Resources, it’s still far below hopes for an El Niño winter. “While for many parts of the state there will be both significant gains in both reservoir storage and stream flow, the effects of previous dry years will remain for now,” said Frank Gehrke, chief of the state’s snow-survey program.
Gehrke plunged a hollow tube into the snowfield at Phillips Station, in the Sierra Nevada 90 miles east of Sacramento, part of the measurement of snow conditions at roughly 100 stations on a day when the snowpack traditionally is deepest. The snow at Phillips was 58.4 inches deep — 97 percent of usual. Last year, there was no snow at all and the statewide reading of 5 percent of average was the lowest ever. Gov. Jerry Brown took part in the 2015 measurement at Phillips Station, and afterward ordered a 25-percent reduction in urban water use.
The drought is in its fifth year in California. The winter precipitation reduced its intensity but arid conditions are worst in the heavily agricultural Central Valley and Southern California. Electronic readings from monitors in the Sierra Nevada said water content in snow in the northern Sierra Nevada was 97-percent of average, while the central region was 88-percent of average and the southern section was 72-percent of average.
“The readings were a disappointment when considering predictions of well-above average snowfall and rain from the large El Niño parked in the central Pacific,” said the DWR. All the same, rainfall has filled reservoirs in Northern California above their usual levels for early spring.
“We’ve been running on a deficit for so long, that we are still in drought,” said Jan Frazier of DWR. “We have not broken the drought although water levels are much better.”
In mid-March, DWR set water allocations at 45-percent of requests to the State Water Project, the fourth time it raised the water-delivery estimate since December due to improving conditions. The 29 public agencies that receive water from the project serve 25 million people and nearly 1 million acres of irrigated farmland. Last year, farmers offset smaller deliveries from the state by drawing water from streams or from wells besides fallowing land.