California water managers said the snowpack survey results Wednesday during the winter's first manual snowpack survey were encouraging, but not where the state needs to be.
Specifically, the manual survey found a snow depth of 54.7 inches – 16 inches more than the average depth measured there since 1965 – and 16.3 inches of water content, 136 percent of the January 1 average for that site.
And so, the California Department of Water Resources took the news in stride.
"It's better than it was," spokesman Doug Carlson said after the results taken atop the Phillips Station snow course off Highway 50 near Sierra-at-Tahoe Road came in. But he didn't rush to say that the water levels would eliminate the almost five years of drought that has battered California and its reservoirs.
Results are in: @CA_DWR says snowpack at 136% longterm average. Promising but more needed to end the #drought pic.twitter.com/YYxzqDdw5O
— Michelle Roberts (@Michelle_NBC) December 30, 2015Statewide, the snowpack stands at 105 percent of average.
Despite the higher-than-average water content, state water managers said snowfall during the remainder of the winter will largely determine whether the El Niño winter packs a predicted punch. Director Mark Cowain said the agency won't know for another three or four months whether that will happen or not.
“Clearly, this is much better that it was last year at this time, but we haven’t had the full effect of the El Niño yet,” said Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program. “If we believe the forecasts, then El Niño is supposed to kick in as we move through the rest of the winter. That will be critical when it comes to looking at reservoir storage.”
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Last week, the annual electronic measurement survey put the water content of the snowpack at 112 percent of normal for this time of year.
State water managerssaid they'll feel more confident if the April 1 snowpack is 150 percent of normal and depleted reservoirs reach normal levels.
The snowpack provides about 30 percent of California's water supply during the months when it melts and rushes through rivers and streams to fill reservoirs that remain critically low.
Last Jan. 1, the snowpack was a meager 45 percent of the historical average. On April 1, it hit a record low with no snow found atop the same peak, for the first time in 75 years of measurements.
Scott Smith from the Associated Press contributed to this report.
