California and many parts of the West rely on snowpack for water resources. There has been less snowpack, as well as rapid spring snowmelt, this year. Consequently, the resulting snow water equivalent, or the amount of water that will be released from a snowpack when it melts, has been drastically low. In California, the snow-water equivalent is at 6% of normal levels for this time of year. In essence, there’s next to nothing left on the ground in the Sierra Nevadas, with state data showing less than an inch of snow water equivalent on average.
The state began the winter wet season in drought as well. That, coupled with a dearth of snow and rain this winter, left the ground so dry that the water from the snowpack seeped into the ground instead of flowing into rivers, streams, and reservoirs.
“What’s amazing to me as a climate scientist is to see the snow melt occur and then to see the rivers lakes and steams not responding,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Nature Conservancy, told CNN. “The soil under the snow is so dry that there is no runoff.”
As of this week, the Drought Monitor declared the entire state of California is now experiencing some form of drought. Nearly three-quarters of the state is in exceptional or extreme drought, the worst categories.
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