Stressed by high temperatures and a record run of dry weather over the last three months, the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of 30% of the state’s water supply, has hit one of its lowest levels for the end of winter in generations.
By comparison, on April 1 last year, the snowpack was 62% of normal. Going back to 1950, only five times has there been less snow on April 1 than this year, all of them during major droughts — in 2015 , 2014 , 1988 , 1977 and 1976 . “We’ve still got some snow up here,” he said Thursday. “It’s not barren. But it has definitely started melting. We’ve lost about a foot in the last week. We’re starting to see bigger patches of soil.”In San Francisco, only 1.13 inches of rain fell in January, February and March this year. That’s the lowest amount in that three-month period in 173 years, when records began during the Gold Rush in 1849, according to meteorologist Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services in Half Moon Bay.
But because the previous two years were also dry, California’s reservoirs did not refill this winter. They remain below average now, which is driving water shortages around the state that will only worsen during the hot summer months to come. And as the grasses and vegetation dry out, wildfires remain an ever-present threat.
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