SOUTH LAKE TAHOE >> The confetti and champagne bottles have been thrown out, but for California drought watchers, the New Year’s festivities are just beginning.
Officials from the state Department of Water Resources on Tuesday took the first manual snow survey of the year near South Lake Tahoe, even as several major storms were forecast to dump between one and two feet over the Sierra Nevada by Thursday, with 10 feet or more coming after that next weekend.
“Things are looking very positive,” said Frank Gehrke, chief of snow surveys for the state, on Tuesday morning. “We’re showing a wet, cold pattern for the rest of this week into next. That’s a real good sign. In years past we have come up to do the survey and the forecast is for dry. But now we have a nice wet pattern setting in right now.”
The Sierra Nevada snowpack is a vast frozen reservoir that provides roughly one-third of the state’s water. As California enters what could be its sixth year of drought, the statewide total was 70 percent of normal Tuesday. But Gehrke said that number will be certain to increase in the coming days.
Snow was falling Tuesday, with chain controls on I-80 and other Sierra highways. The National Weather Service forecast called for two feet between Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Lakes by Thursday morning.
After that, a powerful atmospheric river storm is expected to slam into California over the weekend, which will bring drenching rains and heavy snow.
Tuesday morning, with reporters in tow, Gehrke took a manual snowpack reading at Phillips Station, off Highway 50 near Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort. The snow was 34 inches deep, but much of it was light fluffy snow that had fallen in recent days. Measured by water content, it was 53 percent of average for this date. But the storms in the days ahead will add significantly more, Gehrke said.
“That’s going to really bolster the snowpack,” he said. “I could see us being at (100 percent of) average after those storms move through.”
So far, California has seen significant rain this winter, but much of it has been in the form of warmer storms, which has kept the snow pack somewhat modest.
Heavy rains in October and again in December brought rainfall totals up to healthy levels in the north, and the south, which had lagged throughout the past five years. As of Tuesday morning, San Francisco was at 100 percent of the historic average rainfall for this date, with Sacramento at 148 percent, Oakland at 109, San Jose at 84 percent, Los Angeles at 109, Fresno at 126, Eureka at 160 and San Diego at 151.
All that rain has boosted reservoir levels. The 154 reservoirs tracked by the State Department of Water Resources held 21.5 million acre feet of water at the end of December — 98 percent of their historic average for Dec. 31.
The turnaround from a year ago is dramatic. Shasta Lake, the state’s biggest reservoir, near Redding, is at 118 percent of its historic average, up from 50 percent this time last year. And Lake Oroville in Butte County, the second largest in the state, is at 91 percent, up from 47 percent a year ago.
Clear Lake stood at 3.72 on the Rumsey Gauge as of 1:15 p.m. on Tuesday. With rain through the day and chances good of it continuing through much of the week, the lake is certain to pass the 4.0 mark in a matter of days. The historic high is 7.56 on the Rumsey Gauge.
“Precipitation and storage are doing quite well compared to the past five years of historic drought conditions,” said Bill Croyle, acting director of the state Department of Water Resources. “That makes us cautiously optimistic about water conditions, although some areas in California are still hit hard by the drought and require a response.”
Combined with decent rain and snow totals last winter, this winter’s precipitation has significantly weakened the drought. As of last Thursday, 58 percent of California was classified as being in “severe drought,” down from 88 percent a year ago, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Nebraska.
In fact, much of Northern California, including San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin and coastal counties to the Oregon border, along with northern Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, are no longer classified as being in drought conditions, according to the Drought Monitor. But other parts of the state, particularly Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, and the southern San Joaquin Valley, which have not seen consistent rain in recent years, are still classified as being in exceptional or extreme drought.
“October was one of our wettest on record, and December has produced a nice rebound from November’s below-average precipitation,” said state climatologist Michael Anderson. “California needs sustained above-average precipitation and a decent snowpack to overcome the previous years of drought.”
Because of the significantly different conditions around the state, the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to release new drought rules this month that will assign a water conservation target to each city based on the amount of rainfall it has seen, along with other factors, such as groundwater and reservoir levels.
Meanwhile, the Sierras braced Tuesday for more snow.
“It’s early days,” said Gehrke. “We still have three really solid months of winter remaining and a wet prognosis for at least a week.”
