Snow isn't erasing California's lingering drought

Peter Fimrite in the San Francisco Chronicle: The recent dose of foul weather has raised the spirits of California's water lords, but measurements taken Wednesday in the Sierra Nevada show there is still not enough snow to ease drought conditions. The ritual trek into the snowy wilderness to survey the state's frozen water supply found less snow than normal for this time of year in the Sierra, but more than last year.

"What we're finding this year is really pretty close to last year," said Frank Gehrke, chief of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources, after finishing the last measurement at historic Phillips Station, next to the Sierra-at-Tahoe resort off Highway 50. "It's a little lower in the north. It gets better as we go south, but we've got a lot of winter left. Everything depends on what happens between now and April."

The water content of the snow - the key measurement for how much water will flow into reservoirs - is 85 percent of normal for this date, according to the average of five measurements. It was 76 percent of normal last year.

…Right now, Lake Oroville, the primary storage reservoir for the State Water Project, is at 29 percent of capacity and 47 percent of average for this time of year, water resources officials said. If things don't improve, they said, only 5 percent of the water requested by Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, Central Coast and Southern California farms and cities will be delivered.

One good thing, according to Gehrke, is that the storm-causing condition known as El Niño is in effect. Weather forecasters are nevertheless worried that a high-pressure system could form as it did the past two winters and block precipitation.

Regardless of what happens, Gehrke said it is unlikely California will recover from three years of drought this year. To accomplish that, he said, California would have to have "a real humongous year or a series of above average years" of rain and snow….

Cleaning up after a snow storm in Boreal, California, shot by Mbz1, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License