California’s first snow survey turns up more bare ground than snow

010314DWR’s Frank Gehrke barely needed his boots to survey the snow at Phillips Station in the Sierras, but he wore them anyway.    With just a meager 9.3 inches of snow and patches of bare ground visible all around them, California’s first snow survey didn’t turn up much.  The sample of snow contained 2.3 inches of water content, just a fraction of what is usually an average of 12 inches water content for this time of year.

The lack of snow is deeply concerning to water officials as the snowpack is the state’s largest reservoir, providing a third of the water used by California’s cities and farms.  “While we hope conditions will improve, we are fully mobilized to streamline water transfers and take every action possible to ease the effects of dry weather on farms, homes, and businesses as we face a third consecutive dry year,” said DWR Director Mark Cowin in a press release.  “And every Californian can help by making water conservation a daily habit.”

DWR’s current estimate is that it will only be able to deliver just 5% of state water supplies to the 29 public agencies that supply 25 million Californians and nearly a million acres of farmland, but DWR weather watchers note that it’s still early in the season and the winter could still turn out to be wet.  The initial allocation is usually adjusted upwards as winter storms develop.

Lake Oroville, the largest reservoir on the State Water Project, is at just 36% of its 3.5 MAF capacity, while Central Valley Project’s Shasta Lake is at just 37% of capacity.  The concern is that some areas will be even harder hit next year if the dry conditions persist and the state’s reservoirs remain depleted.

010314snowsurvey_homeThe continuing dry weather has prompted state officials to start taking action.  DWR’s Cowin has mobilized a drought management team to “offset potentially devastating impacts to citizen health, well-being, and our economy” and Governor Brown convened an Interagency Drought Task Force to address the situation.

However, the long-term solution demands more than drought management teams and interagency tasks forces, pointed out Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird in a media statement.  “In the long-term, California must continue to focus on actions to modernize our water delivery system by completing the environmental planning process for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan,” he said.  “Right now, we cannot move water in a way that is safe for fish, but is also necessary to ride out these dry periods without significant economic disruption. With the conveyance proposed in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan in place, the Central Valley this year would have an extra 800,000 acre-feet of water in the San Luis Reservoir. This effort to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem and greatly enhance the water system’s reliability is the best investment we can make right now in our water future.”

Check out recent reservoir conditions on the Journal of Water’s Hydrologic Conditions page.

Written by Chris “Maven” Austin