California's snowpack jumps to twice the average. But will it fill drought-depleted reservoirs?
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
The snowpack in California’s mountains weighed in Wednesday as the biggest it’s been at the start of February anytime this century, a product of the recent storms that have flipped the script on drought and begun easing water shortages across the state.
State water officials conducting their monthly snow survey logged snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades at 205% of the average for the date. At Phillips Station, one of the state’s oldest and most central monitoring sites where surveyors convened in front of TV cameras for measurements Wednesday morning, the snowpack was 193% of average.
The numbers are welcome relief for California after its driest three-year period on record. Melted snow supplies nearly a third of the state’s drinking and irrigation water, and it usually comes at a critical time — when the rains are over and summer water demand kicks in.
But the amount of the newfound snow that makes it to California’s taps, as it begins to thaw and wash down mountainsides into reservoirs, hinges on several yet-to-be-determined variables, including how much more snow falls, how early it melts and how much soaks into the ground. Any of these things could undo the state’s fickle recovery from drought.
Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/california-s-snowpack-jumps-to-twice-the-17757389.php
The recent drought followed by precipitation this Winter are a respite and not a solution to California's water problems.
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Drink more wine? 
I decided a long time ago sobriety isn't so bad.
