The Sierra Nevada roughly translates to “snowy mountain range” in Spanish, but as the world warms, the dense snowpack that gave the high peaks its name is waning.
As the summer months inch closer, state officials have made clear that the drought gripping the state is set to continue based on snowpack data released Friday.
“California is now facing a third consecutive year of dry conditions and extending this ongoing drought,” he said. “We have less snow right now than we did last year at this time.” The dismal results came on the heels of news that the start of this year has been the driest in a century. It’s a reality that prompted Governor Gavin Newsom to issue an executive order to encourage local water authorities to activate stricter conservation measures.
Another challenge is that warming temperatures are shifting the behavior of snow and complicating forecasters’ ability to accurately predict Spring runoff. “They grossly overestimated how much water, even the little bit of snow that we got, would produce,” said Gleick. “This year, the worry is that even that amount of snow will again not produce the amount of runoff that the models tell us to expect. And that makes everything even worse.”