Recent storm drops 9 inches of snow at Ponderosa

A blustery winter storm that moved over Porterville Monday night dropped welcome snow in the nearby mountains already blanketed in white.

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) said last week that if wet weather continued, water allocations to farmers, who have fallowed thousands of acres of land, could increase.

“There are more storms to come,” meteorologist Terry Morse said. “It looks like Wednesday there will be some more rain and snow in higher elevations, and then again on Saturday. I think it’s all going to be the same as it was Monday, it’s not going to be too heavy.”

While snowfall measurements become increasingly impressive, the most recent storm brought less than half of an inch to the Valley floor. In Visalia, the National Weather Service measured .07 inches of rain.

In Ponderosa — located east of Porterville at about 7,200 feet in Giant Sequoia National Monument — nine inches of snow fell Monday night, bringing the seasonal total to 18 feet, 10 inches — topping figures seen in the last 11 years. The snowpack there is now 7 feet, 3 inches, according to local weather watcher Carl Cappelen.

“Still have a light snow fall, and the sun is trying to peek out,” he wrote in an e-mail at about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

According to measurements taken by the DWR, at Quaking Aspen, at the top of the Tule River watershed, the water content was 33.43 inches, well above the highest levels measured in at least the last year. The snow depth measurement for Tuesday was not available, but on Monday, the snowpack there totaled 7 feet, 5 inches.

Moving north to Lodgepole, in Sequoia National Park, the latest storm brought an additional five inches. The snowpack there now measures 7 feet, 8 inches.

Cal Fire’s latest measurements taken Feb. 26 at Mountain Home Demonstration State Forest, in the mountains northeast of Porterville — elevation 6,600 feet — brought similarly promising news.

The average snow depth was 68.8 inches and water content was 26.1 inches. The numbers are better than those taken at the same time in 2009, when the snow depth was 47.5 inches, and the water content was 16.6 inches.

The DWR conducted its most recent snowpack survey on March 3 and found a water content 107 percent of normal for the date.

The “readings boost our hope that we will be able to increase the State Water Project allocation by this spring to deliver more water to our cities and farms,” said DWR Director Mark Cowin. “But we must remember that even a wet winter will not fully offset three consecutive dry years or pumping restrictions to protect Delta fish so we must continue to conserve and protect our water resources.”
On Feb. 26, the State Water Project allocations were increased from 5 to 15 percent of requested amounts. More rain and snowfall could mean that the final allocation this spring jumps to about 40 percent of requested amounts.

But the figures will also partially be determined by how the fishery agency restrictions on Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta pumping are applied, which will determine how much flexibility DWR has to export water from the Delta.

In 2009, the State Water Project delivered 40 percent of customer requests. The federal Central Valley Project in 2009 was only able to deliver 10 percent of contracted amounts to some agricultural areas in the San Joaquin Valley. The reduced deliveries were due both to dry weather and fishery agency pumping restrictions to protect fish species, according to the DWR.

Contact Jenna Chandler at 784-5000, Ext. 1050, or jchandler@portervillerecorder.com.