No drought doubt: California’s snowpack lagging

PHILLIPS STATION, Calif. — California water officials tromped through long-awaited fresh snowdrifts in the Sierra Nevada mountains Monday, but a welcome late-winter storm still left the state with less than half the usual snow for this late point in the state’s important rain and snow season.

Runoff from snow in the mountains historically provides Californians with nearly a third of their water for the whole year. Monday’s snow surveys in the mountains by state water officials, with news crews in tow, is one of several closely watched gauges of how much water California cities and farms will have.

Plunging a rod into a snow drift, snow-survey chief Frank Gehrke measured 41.1 inches of snow Monday, almost all of it laid down by a heavy winter storm that rolled in Wednesday.

That same spot had just 7 percent of its usual snow before the storm hit, dropping up to 8 feet of snow. On Monday, the Phillips Station measuring location was up to 39 percent of the historical average for the date, Gehrke said. Across the Sierras, the state was at 37 percent of normal snowfall as of Monday.

“Of course we don’t know what the rest of the month is going to bring,” Gehrke said. “But it is a much rosier, happier picture than it was a week ago.”

California had accumulated less than a quarter of its normal snowpack for the year before last week’s storm. By February, most of Southern California was back in drought, owing to a dud of a rain and snow season so far this year.

It would take six more storms to bring the state up to its normal winter precipitation by April. The odds of that happening are about onein-50, the National Weather Service cautioned.

March is typically the last month of the rain and snow season in the state.