Regulators say California snowpack has deepened after 4 years of punishing drought

Over the past several weeks, snowboarders, skiers and small children have reveled in snow that has fallen in volumes California hasn’t seen in more than four years.

Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, said in a statement that “more than four years of drought have left a water deficit around the state that may be hard to overcome”.

The state’s largest six reservoirs now hold between 22 percent and 53 percent of their historical averages for December, according to the Department of Water Resources. Visit the California Department of Water Resources for interactive maps. “That’s a lot better than we’ve had in previous years”. Officials say that in normal years the snowpack supplies about 30% of California’s water.

“In 2016, the water agencies in the San Gabriel Valley will continue to work closely together with the Los Angeles County Flood Control District and Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts to capture and store as much water as possible and reuse all the water that is available”, said Shane Chapman, general manager of the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District, which serves about 1 million people.

On Wednesday, electronic readings from 99 stations throughout the Sierra Nevada showed that the snowpack statewide held 10.2 inches of “water equivalent” – or about 105% of average for the day. Together with the next worse measure, “extreme drought”, the land under the two categories covers 69% of state.

The winters first manual snow survey – a public relations photo opp for the media – confirms what was already known: The Sierra snowpack has water content far greater than a year earlier.

Carlson said that Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in the state, is only at 31 percent of its total capacity and a little more than half of its historic average for December 30.

The El Nino weather and oceanic phenomenon, characterized by a warming of the Pacific Ocean that often brings precipitation to California, may help ease the drought over the next few months, but experts caution that the state’s woes are far from over. Past year the allocation was 20 percent. El Niños in the early 1980s and late 1990s brought about twice as much rain as normal, he said.