Survey Scheduled
Sacramento, CA — Did the recent series of storms really help alleviate the continuing California drought?
We’ll find out Friday when the Department of Water Resources (D.W.R.) conducts its second snow survey of the season at 11am near Lake Tahoe.
Phillips Station on Hwy 50 at Sierra at Tahoe Rd., about 90 miles east of Sacramento, is the manual survey location. Overall there are five monthly winter and spring measurements that help water supply planners estimate the amount of spring snowmelt runoff into reservoirs.
Thanks to last week’s series of storms all current snowpack measurements are over 100 percent of normal. According to D.W.R. Public Information Officer Don Strickland the overall snowpack total now stands at 119 percent of normal.
The Northern Sierra region is 128 percent of normal, the Central Sierra region (Calaveras and Tuolumne counties) is 104 percent of normal and the Southern Sierra region is 125 percent of normal.
Strickland adds that the most significant measurement is the final one of the year scheduled for the first of April. That is the measurement by which hydrologists will be able to forecast the water supply for the summer months.
Written by bill.johnson@mlode.com
