People walk past a snowbank piled up in front of condominiums as snow falls in the Sierra Nevada mountains from yet another storm system which is bringing heavy snow to higher elevations while further raising the snowpack on March 28, 2023 in Mammoth Lakes, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
California’s statewide snowpack could top records after a recent series of powerful storms, state water officials said Monday, and melting snow from the Sierra Nevada range poses a severe flood risk to some areas.
This year’s major snowfall provides some relief to California, which was three years into a prolonged drought and grappling with plummeting reservoir levels. Statewide snowpack is at 237% of the April average, ranking among the highest in state history, according to the fourth snow survey of the season by the Department of Water Resources.
Officials, who took readings from 130 snow sensors placed across the state, said the results were higher than any other reading since the sensor network was established in the mid-1980s. Before the network was established, the April summary for snow course measurements in 1952 was also 237% of average, although there were fewer snow courses at that time, making it difficult to compare with this month’s results.
“This year’s result will go down as one of the largest snowpack years on record in California,” said Sean de Guzman, manager of DWR’s Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Unit.
“Because additional snow courses were added over the years, it is difficult to compare results accurately across the decades with precision, but this year’s snowpack is definitely one of the biggest the state has seen since the 1950s,” Guzman said.
California’s snowpack levels varied by region, with the Southern Sierra snowpack reaching 300% of its April 1 average and the Central Sierra reaching 237% of its April 1 average, officials said. And the critical Northern Sierra, home to the state’s largest surface water reservoirs, is at 192% of its…
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