A powerful storm expected to hit California starting Thursday could bring the strongest blizzard of the winter for the Sierra Nevada, potentially dumping 5 to 12 feet of snow at elevations 5,000 feet above sea level.
With its Mediterranean climate, California receives most of its annual precipitation in just a few months, with the bulk of it falling from December to February.
Weeks of heavy rain and snowfall in California have given experts “cautious optimism” about the state’s water year and a snowpack to help boost water reserves recovering from years of drought.
At the dawn of the new year in 1997, the Truckee River transformed. The winter season had thus far been great for snow, but when a subtropical storm from near the Hawaiian Islands rolled in, it carried with it unseasonably warm rain. The warm rainfall combined with snowmelt to swell the rivers, with the Truckee burying much of downtown Reno under water.
Despite forecasts of heavy rain and possible flooding in the coming days, state water managers are warning that the “snow drought” in California’s Sierra Nevada could remain for the rest of the winter and into the spring.
The water content of California’s mountain snowpack was just over half of the normal average on Tuesday, a modest increase from Jan. 1 but still far below the usual, state officials said.
Unlike early 2023, when nonstop atmospheric river storms built a deep Sierra Nevada snowpack, replenished depleted reservoirs and flooded parts of California, snowfall and rain is sharply diminished so far this year. But state water officials say there is plenty of winter left to accumulate more snow and precipitation.
After a worryingly weak start to the winter for California’s mountains, two storms — including what’s expected to be the biggest of the season so far — are expected to dump several inches of snow on the Sierra Nevada this week, days after some promising weekend snowfall.
U.S. agriculture is at risk from climatic extremes and groundwater over-extraction, says a new report from the Environmental Defense Fund.
This will be the first time in several years that California will enter summer with the majority of its reservoirs at or over 90 percent of total capacity, according to data from the California Department of Water Resources.
As of Saturday, Shasta, Oroville, Folsom, New Bullards Bar, San Luis, Castaic and Cachuma reservoirs are over 90 percent of their total capacity and in the case of Shasta and Oroville are less than 5 percent away from being full.
