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

January 27, 2017 - SACRAMENTO – The Department of Water Resources (DWR) will host the news media on February 2 for the second 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 contentof the snow at Phillips.

The first months of Water Year 2017 (October 1 to today) have been exceptionally wet in California due to atmospheric river storms and rainfall from lesser storms that drenched the state. All three regions DWR monitors continuously for rainfall had recorded more by January 23 than their annual averages for the entire water year, which runs from October 1 through September 30.

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 February 1 to determine the water content of the snowpack, which normally contributes about 30 percent of California’s water when it melts. 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