May 1, 2008

Bad news on water supply front

Frank Gehrke measures the paltry snow depth near Echo Summit in the Sierra.

Frank Gehrke has been checking the snow's depth and water content every winter and spring for 21 years, and he's rarely seen less snow than he did today near Echo Summit in the Sierra. In a tradition that is Calfornia's answer to Groundhog Day, Gehrke shoves a hollow metal tube into the snow at 7 spots, each 50 feet apart, behind Phillips Station at 6,800 feet just off Highway 50. Then he averages the depth of the snow he finds and from that, and similar forays at several other points in the mountains, the state Department of Water Resources forecasts California's water supply for the year. It was not a good sign today when Gehrke found a pencil he'd dropped on his last trip up here a month ago. The pencil was in the dirt where he should have found snow. At five of the first seven spots on his course, in fact, Gehrke came up dry. Overall, the average snow depth was just 3.3 inches, and the water content of that snow was 1.7 inches, just 11 percent of average for this location on May 1.

With essentially no snow for the month, the location Gehrke was checking today lost 25 inches of water content in April, and that followed a bone-dry March.

Gehrke described his findings as "pretty grim."

Schwarzenegger officials will give an official assessment of the water situation later today.

UPDATE: Overall, the snowpack water content today averaged 67 percent of normal throughout the 400-mile-long mountain range. Levels were 88 percent of normal in the northern Sierra and about 60 percent of normal in the central and southern regions.

Posted by dweintraub on May 1, 2008 12:31 PM