Meager snow pack causing worries

Snow surveyors for Sequoia National Forest found an average snow pack of about 13 inches at Quaking Aspen Wednesday, about 30 percent of what was there a year ago, but 35 percent of average for the end of January.

Statewide, surveyors found that California’s Sierra Nevada snow pack is 37 percent of average and in some places less than 2 feet of snow exists.

A year ago, said Josh Courter, a hydrologist with the Sequoia National Forest, there was 43 inches of snow at Quaking Aspen, 7,200-foot elevation, at the end of January, but that was after more than 10 inches of rain had fallen on Porterville.

This year, rainfall in Porterville is just 3.43 inches after an inch fell Jan. 23-25.

The latest survey means bad news in a state dependent upon snow melt to meet the water needs of 25 million people. Resorts are suffering as skiers turn up their noses at man-made snow, especially after last year’s prolific powder. And farmers are bracing for a tough summer.

“The probability of getting back to average is really low” this far into the winter, said Randy Julander, the Utah Snow Survey supervisor. “January doubled our snow pack and we loved that, but we’re getting back into dry, warm weather.”

Paltry snow means big worries this summer for California farmers in the Central Valley who depend on snow melt delivered through aqueducts to irrigate the most prolific agricultural region in the nation.

Electronic measurements estimate the statewide snow pack at 37 percent of normal for this time of year and 23 percent of the average April 1 reading when the spring thaw starts. The 15 inches measured at Echo Summit near South Lake Tahoe contained just 3.8 inches of water.

Courter said the water content of the snow above Porterville was good at 40 percent.

“There’s just not much snow up there,” he added.

At Mt. Home State Forest, manager Jim Kral said they weren’t even taking a survey right away.

“I don’t expect we’re going to have a very stellar report,” he said, adding there is little snow and many bare spots can be found on the Old Enterprise Mill snow course at the 6,600-foot elevation.

He did report they got about a foot a snow from the last storm, but daytime temperatures have been warm enough to melt some of the snow.

Snow melt is what feeds the state’s reservoirs like Success Lake. On Wednesday, storage in the lake was 20,197 acre feet, about half of what it was a year ago.

“We’ve got two more months,” warned Courter. “In seven years doing this, I’ve seen this and then we get a lot of snow in March and April.”

The monthly snow pack measurements are anticipated by water managers and users around the state, and Frank Tehrke, chief of snow survey for the California Department of Water Resources, described it as one of the top three driest since the department began taking measurements in 1946.

“So far, we just haven’t received a decent number of winter storms,” DWR Director Mark Cowin said in a statement. He was more pessimistic than he had been a month earlier when he said that “we still have most of our winter ahead of us.”

After an encouraging start in October, the Sierra has benefited from just a handful of storms, with none producing the snowfall that state water managers want. Squaw Valley Resort recorded a cumulative 85 inches of snow so far this year, below its average of 450 inches and nowhere near the 810 inches recorded in last year’s bountiful blanketing.

But last year’s snow means the state’s reservoirs remain nearly full after several years of drought. Lake Shasta, the state’s largest, is at 100 percent of its normal storage for this time of year, though it’s only at 68 percent capacity. San Luis Reservoir, the biggest south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, is at 121 percent of average and 96 percent capacity.
Agencies that supply water to more than 25 million Californians and nearly a million acres of farmland requested slightly more than 4 million acre-feet of water this year. The Department of Water Resources has stuck with its estimate that it will be able to deliver 60 percent of the amount this year. Last year, the department was able to deliver 80 percent of the requested amount.

The prediction for state water deliveries is still far above the drought years of 2007 to 2010, when as little as 35 percent of the water requested could be delivered.