February storms brought fresh snow to the Sierra Nevada, but California snowpack remains well below average for a winter that brought record warmth to much of the West.
California water officials said Friday that the Sierra snowpack is 66% of average for this time of year.
“We’re ahead of where we were last month but still well behind where we would have liked,” said Andy Reising, snow survey manager for the California Department of Water Resources.
Reising and other officials were wearing skis on a muddy patch of grass at Phillips Station near South Lake Tahoe, measuring snow where last week’s rains were beginning to melt.
“I fell into a creek this morning because there was water flowing underneath the snow,” he said.
California Department of Water Resources (from left) Engineer Derick Louie, Engineer Jordan Thoennes, Hydrometeorologist Angelique Fabbiani-Leon and Snow and Water Forecast Division Manager Andy Reising conduct the third snow survey of 2026 at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada on February 27. (Xavier Mascareñas/California Department of Water Resources)
California relies on mountain snowpack for about 30% of its water.
But this winter, extreme warmth across the West means more precipitation comes in the form of rain rather than snow — a symptom of global warming, which in recent years has been pushing up average snow lines in mountains and changing the timing of runoff.
There are 130 monitoring stations in the Sierra Nevada that provide electronic readings. The northern range is currently at 46% of average and the southern range is at 90% of average.
California’s snow season usually peaks around April 1.
California has seen above-average precipitation this winter, despite a lack of snowfall across much of the country. according to US Drought Monitor The website shows that no areas in California are currently experiencing drought.
But in 11 Western states, 45% are in at least moderate drought, and much of the Colorado River Basin is in severe drought.
Snowpack in the upper Colorado River Basin is 66% of average. This will mean less snowmelt for river reservoirs, which down to very low levels.
The epidemic is most severe in the western region snow drought It’s Oregon. Its snowpack is only 34% of average for this time of year, the second-heaviest since 1981.
Read more: Winter is halfway through, and heat is melting California’s snowpack
Temperatures between November and January were the hottest on record. “That’s really a big part of why our snowpack is so poor,” said Oregon State Climatologist Larry O’Neill, an associate professor at Oregon State University.
“Forecasts are showing that our winters are going to be more like this in the future,” O’Neill said. “So this is really a test of our ability to provide water.”
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
