The Department of Water Resources (DWR) will conduct its fourth manual snow survey, Monday, April 2, at 11 a.m. near Echo Summit off Highway 50.
It is expected that manual measurements of snowpack water content will corroborate the low electronic readings from remote sensors up and down the state’s mountain ranges.
Electronic readings on Thursday indicated that statewide, water content in the snowpack is only 51 percent of normal for the date, and 50 percent of the average April 1 measurement when the snowpack is normally at its peak before the spring melt.
Surveyors from DWR and cooperating agencies today will fan out to numerous sites for the fourth of five manual snow surveys made each winter to forecast the amount of frozen water that will trickle into streams, reservoirs and aquifers when the snow melts this spring and early summer.
This winter’s unusually dry conditions to date have principally been caused by a high pressure ridge along California’s coast that has diverted most storms to the north.
One bright spot this year is the state’s good reservoir storage, due to conserved runoff from last winter’s storms.
Lake Oroville in Butte County, the State Water Project’s principal storage reservoir, is at 106 percent of average for the date (82 percent of its 3.5 million acre-foot capacity), Lake Shasta north of Redding, the federal Central Valley Project’s largest reservoir with a capacity of 4.5 million acre-feet, is at 99 percent of its normal storage level for the date (81 percent of capacity).
San Luis Reservoir in Merced County, an important storage reservoir south of the Delta, is at 94 percent of average for the date (86 percent of its capacity of 2,027,840 acre-feet).
San Luis is a critically important source of water for both the State Water Project and Central Valley Project when pumping from the Delta is restricted or interrupted.
Statewide, reservoir storage is 106 percent of normal for the date.
Electronic snowpack readings are available on the Internet at http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/snow/DLYSWEQ .
Electronic reservoir level readings may be found at http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.action .
See DWR’s new Water Conditions page at http://www.water.ca.gov/waterconditions/ .