Water Content of California Snowpack Far Above Normal Levels

California's upland snowfall holds 160% of the h2o it usually does this clip of year, authorities h2o officials announced Thursday, marking a beardown commencement to the drought-stricken state's traditionally bedewed wintertime season.

Still, it's excessively aboriginal to find whether California volition spot capable rainfall and snowfall successful the months to travel to enactment a dent successful the drought.

The authorities is “definitely not retired of the woods rather yet," said Sean de Guzman, manager of the snowfall surveys and h2o proviso forecasting for the California Department of Water Resources.

De Guzman spoke astatine Phillips Station, 1 of hundreds of locations wherever authorities officials marque manual oregon physics snowpack measurements aggregate times per year.

About a 3rd of California's h2o proviso comes from snowfall arsenic it melts and flows down from the Sierra Nevada and the Shasta-Trinity upland scope successful bluish California.

California conscionable finished its second-driest twelvemonth connected grounds and galore of the state's reservoirs that proviso h2o for tens of millions of radical are astatine historical lows. But respective almighty storms swept done the authorities this month, dumping snowfall and causing immoderate roadworthy closures and large disruptions.

The storms made for a acold much affirmative snowfall speechmaking than past December, erstwhile h2o levels successful the snowpack were astatine conscionable 52% of the humanities average.