Before and After: Measuring California's Thin Mountain Snowpack

A California Department of Water Resources survey of snow conditions in the mountains near Lake Tahoe has confirmed what cold, hard, remotely collected data -- including views from space -- have been telling us: This season's snowpack is at critically low levels.

At midday Thursday, a DWR team visited a Sierra Nevada meadow at Phillips Station, just off U.S. 50 near Echo Summit, to measure the snow there and calculate its water content.

The not-unexpected result: Although there's a foot more snow on the ground than there was a month ago, its water content is just 2.6 inches -- 14 percent of the Phillips Station average for early February.

DWR said Thursday that statewide, the snowpack is at 27 percent of average for this time of year.

That's mainly the result of a) a very dry December and b) the prevalence of storms in November and January that were so warm that they dropped snow only at high elevations. Until the last 10 days or so, elevations at or below 7,000 feet recorded little in the way of accumulating snow.

Why any of this matters: The mountain snowpack is often called California's "frozen reservoir." As a rule of thumb, water mavens say that the mountain snowpack supplies nearly one-third of California's water needs. So, a meager snowpack means meager spring runoff into reservoirs -- and perhaps, down the road, less water to distribute to farms and cities.

The DWR and other analysts are quick to point out that last year's historic wet season filled the state's reservoirs -- most of which are storing more water than they typically would at this time of year.

For water watchers and the drought-anxious, attention now turns to the prospects for rain during the rest of the wet season. If you sneak a look outside in most of California, it's warm and sunny. The consensus from those who divine the trends in weather forecast models is that we'll be stuck with these beautiful, non-snowpack-enhancing conditions for at least the next couple of weeks.