Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, conducted the second survey of 2017 during February
Credit: DWR

February 23, 2017 - SACRAMENTO – The Department of Water Resources (DWR) will  hold the snow survey on March 1 for this winter’s third manual snow survey at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada.

Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, will begin the survey at 11 a.m. just off Highway 50 near Sierra-at-Tahoe Road, about 90 miles east of Sacramento. The survey will determine the water content of the snow at Phillips. Water Year 2017, which runs from October 1 to September 30, is on track to be the wettest in DWR’s records. The statewide snowpack’s water content in data collected electronically currently is 188 percent of normal for today’s date. All three regions DWR monitors continuously for rainfall have had more than twice their average rainfall this year.

The Phillips snow course has been measured each winter since 1941 and is one of hundreds that will be traversed during a 10-day period around March 1 to determine the water content of the snowpack, which normally contributes about 30 percent of California’s water. Manual readings supplement DWR’s electronic data.

Resources:

Electronic snowpack readings from approximately 100 “snow pillows” in the Sierra Nevada are available at the California Data Exchange Center (CDEC), Snow Water Equivalents. For earlier readings, click the calendar icon below the map, select a date, then Refresh Data.

Water Year 2017 rainfall can be found at CDEC Precipitation; look in the right-hand column for the Northern Sierra 8-station index for updated rainfall readings in the critical northern portion of the state. The San Joaquin 5-station and Tulare Basin 6-station links are also on this page.

For current electronic storage readings, go to CDEC Reservoirs.
Source: DWR