Sierra Nevada Snow Smashes Records, Eases California Drought
A winter snowstorm this weekend dumped nearly 40 inches of snow on the Sierra Nevada mountains from Sunday into Monday, breaking the record for snowfall in December, and possibly signaling relief in California’s two-year-old drought.
The storm brought the total snowfall recorded in December to 193.7 inches and forced the closure of resorts near Lake Tahoe, which had been bone dry as recently as Thanksgiving weekend but now have more snow than they can handle.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
On Monday, the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, located northwest of Lake Tahoe at Donner Pass, recorded 38.9 inches of snowfall over the previous 24 hours — bringing the monthly total to 193.7 inches so far for December. The previous December record was in 1970, with 179 inches of snow.
“We smashed the snowfall record for December, which is crazy because it didn’t start snowing until about three weeks ago, and we didn’t have any snow for six weeks prior to that,” [OpenSnow forecaster Brian] Allegretto said.
After receiving huge early-season snow dumps at the end of October, Tahoe was hit with a warm, dry spell in November that kept the mountains around Tahoe all but dirt bare.
This month’s mammoth snowstorms also helped bolster California’s snowpack: The state increased its snowpack average from 18 percent on Dec. 1 to 153 percent through Monday, according to state data.
Snow continued into the week, with storms Monday and Tuesday, and possibly on Friday as well, the last day of December.
Other mountainous parts of California, including the mountains north of San Bernardino, have received heavy snowfall this week, bringing a late “white Christmas” to the higher elevations in the state, and much-needed rain below.
Since the wet winters of 2017-2018, California has suffered a severe drought, akin to the drought from 2011-2017. Water users already faced increasing restrictions, and residential users may be required to ration use unless the state’s reservoirs and snowpack can recover.
Though California has failed to invest in water storage throughout its largely dry decade, the unexpected winter storms bring hope that 2022, at least, might be less dry and that the drought could yet be broken.
See more here: climatechangedispatch.com
Header image: The New York Times
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Kevin Doyle
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Must be due to ‘Climate Change’…
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I read: “This month’s mammoth snowstorms also helped bolster California’s snowpack: The state increased its snowpack average from 18 percent on Dec. 1 to 153 percent through Monday, according to state data.”
PSI has be criticized for not being SCIENTIFIC. No one at PSI wrote this. No one at Climate Change Dispatch wrote this. And as I read what has been quoted: I am not sure if what I just quoted was actually written by “Brian] Allegretto” (with a mistake I often make) or some other unknown person at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote it.
Given these facts I now critically comment about my initially quoted STATEMENT. Beginning with the quote: “The only source of knowledge is experience.” (Einstein). I grew up in South Dakota USA beginning when I was born in January 1941 until about 1963 and have visited it at least once a year until say 2020. So I have lot of experience with falling snow of greatly different ‘types).
One of these experiences was that Dead Wood SD. We had gone there, from eastern SD, to ski but hadn’t checked the possible skiing conditions. So when we got to a town less than 20 miles from Dead Wood and only a few hundred feet lower than Dead Wook we observed people playing golf on green grass. So for a day or two we drove around even higher elevations (because I and my wife had never been to this area.
But one evening we went to a restaurant in Dead Wood when it was just starting to snow. When we came out of the restaurant the snow powder was over our knees but we could not really feel we were walking through any snow. The next morning we went skiing in this powder and as the day went on the powder became compressed but certainly not yet packed firm so it was easy for us inexperienced skiers to make turns to slow our descent down the slopes.
I review this experience to state I am sure, based upon this experience, that no snowpack (as commonly defined) was formed between Dec. 1 to Dec. 27).
Have a good day, Jerry
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