Houseboats Gather on Lake Don Pedro During February 2015
April 30, 2015 - SACRAMENTO – Due to the prospect of finding only bare ground, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) will not conduct a May 1 snow survey for the media at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada 90 miles east of Sacramento.
“We can’t count on the Sierra snowpack to replenish our water supplies,” said California Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin. “Major reservoirs are dropping at a time when they typically would be filling with melted snow. We need careful, sparing use of water across the state, because we don’t know when this drought will end.”
When Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. attended the April 1 survey at Phillips and announced a mandatory 25-percent reduction in water use across the state, the ground was barren of snow in every direction. It was the only April 1 since DWR began surveying Phillips in 1941 that no snow was found there. Photos from the April 1 snow survey can be found here.
DWR and its cooperating agencies verify snow conditions at locations throughout the Sierra. Despite last week’s storm that left snow on the ground at Phillips Station, that snow is expected to melt away by Friday. A formal survey is not conducted when a snow course has no snow. The snowpack normally is at its peak in early April before slowly melting in spring and early summer into streams and reservoirs to supply 30 percent of the water used by California’s cities and farms. A dry and warm April led to DWR’s decision to skip its traditional early-May mediaoriented visit to Phillips. The last time snow was found there on May 1 was 2011.
Today’s readings from electronic sensors up and down the Sierra indicate that statewide, California’s snowpack water content is one-half an inch, 3 percent of the 16.6 inches normally in the snowpack on today’s date. On April 1, the most comprehensive measurement date, the statewide measurement was just 5 percent of normal.
For more than two years, California has been dealing with the effects of drought. To learn about all the actions the state has taken to manage our water system and cope with the impacts of the drought, visit Drought.CA.Gov.
