California’s Sierra Nevada was so snow-free in December that skiers and farmers worried that a disappointing winter was sure to give way to a dry spring and summer.
Then came a deluge in the coming months, enough to return the state to normal snowfall levels and then some, state leaders announced Tuesday during the most critical snow count of the year. Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada on Tuesday was 110 percent of the average for early April, an encouraging sign that the state would have plenty of water — at least, in the coming months.
“The average is terrific,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the state Department of Water Resources, from a field blanketed in white and surrounded by evergreen trees near the headwaters of the South Fork of the American River near Lake Tahoe.
The snow reservoir located atop the Sierra Nevada, the state’s largest mountain range, is by far the largest and most important reservoir in California. In the following dry months, the snow will melt and descend, replenishing the scarce water reserves.
For the second year in a row, Californians issued flood watches and blizzard warnings in February and March as a series of major storms caused mudslides and snarled traffic, particularly in Southern California. Last weekend, a storm once again caused a section of Highway 1 to collapse in the Big Sur area.
But Gov. Gavin Newsom warned residents not to get too comfortable with heavy rainfall and pointed to month-to-month fluctuations as indicative of how California’s weather patterns have become increasingly erratic.
“Extremes are becoming the new reality,” Mr. Newsom said. “A weather system or weather year is not necessarily a trend.”
Early April is a particularly important time to gauge the state of California’s waters in the increasingly wide swings between flood and drought. It’s the time of year when residents expect storms to start disappearing for months.
A year ago, after a procession of atmospheric rivers wreaked havoc on unprepared communities from the coast to the mountains, the same spot where Mr. Newsom and water officials stood on Tuesday was covered in more than 10 feet of snow. Only half of that amount exists this year.
But the heads of state were nevertheless happy. Consider this: Nine years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown stood in the same meadow “not able to find a patch of snow,” said Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the California Department of Natural Resources.
In the years that followed, the state would become even drier. Millions of acres of dryland vegetation burned in 2020. Heading into last year, one of California’s wettest years on record, six million Californians were under water delta rules, Mr. Crowfoot said, “and we were planning for many more.” . “
Mr. Newsom stressed that the state still needed to prepare for future droughts. California’s water system, he said, “was designed for a world that no longer exists.” Climate models show that the American West will have to deal with less and less water as temperatures rise to dangerous levels during the summer.
Mr. Newsom said state leaders are not abandoning projects aimed at capturing and storing water when it is available. He said the state has spent $9 billion on water projects in the past three years alone.
“We recognize our responsibility,” he said. “There is nothing normal about this average year.”