Looking at spring flooding causing big
concerns and parts of Yosemite closing again.
I'm ABC10 Chief Meteorologist Ma
Woods in Northern California ouf
Sacramento and we are tracking what was
historic snowfall over the winter season.
Now with the heat on,
we're starting to see the big m.
Here's a look at our highs for y
throughout the state well above average.
Normally the valley runs anywhere from
about 80 to 85 degrees this time of year.
Yesterday we were hitting highs
in the 90s and one hundred's.
And you can see once again as we
head throughout the Central Val,
anywhere from about 90 to
100 degrees this afternoon.
Bakersfield checking in at one O
2 late today, Mammoth Lakes at ,
and then for South Lake Tahoe 6.
Now the reason I point out those
two places is because those are
locations where we did have big
snowpack coming in this past se.
And with those temperatures and
plenty of access to daylight,
we're starting to see much of
that melting down the hill.
That to mention that we saw shos
and thunderstorms for today,
so rain on top of snow helping o
accelerate some of that melt going on.
It did kind of dampen some of or
temperature increases with the cloud cover,
but nonetheless you get rain on top of
snow that is going to add to that melt.
The good news for Monday is we l
bring down those temperatures ever so
slightly by about a degree or t,
but the thunderstorm risk.
Starts to migrate northward,
so no longer will we have that
bigger risk of rain on top of s.
It's just going to be access
to daylight and the heat.
We're roughly seeing about 6 to 12 inches
of snow melt per day at this po.
On a three day scale.
That's about how much we've
seen over the past three days.
So the cold water and swift
currents are causing concerns,
especially for dangerous
conditions on our rivers.
Obviously never crossing flooded
roadways are is recommended
as well as any road closers.
You don't want to try to navigate through
that because unfortunately that water
is coming down at a pretty rapid pace.
Always wear a life jacket as wel
if you're going to be heading
out to any of our waterways,
but many water officials are sag
don't even tent it right now because of
how much snow is melting down the hill.
It is making for dangerous conditions
a little bit deeper into the se,
perhaps holding off until mid June would be.
A better time to go out to see y
of our waterways and enjoy them.
The snowmelt path goes like thi.
We'll just take a look at Northn
California for a moment here for
the northern Sierra Nevada,
we've got the American River
and the Feather River,
both of which are going to
feed into reservoirs Oroville
and then obviously Folsom.
Oroville's a much larger
reservoir can handle a lot more
inflow, whereas Folsom's a bit smaller.
So we're going to see a lot
more releases happening there.
That water then will head
into downtown Sacramento.
The confluence of the Sacramentd
American Rivers is what we see here cuz the
feather connects to the Sacramento River.
This Discovery Park happens to a
place where we traditionally can see,
especially in the winter, a lot of flooding.
Not necessarily so much in this spring.
It can certainly happen, but.
With projected flows and seeing
how much snow melt is coming in,
water managers have a little bit
better opportunity to release tt
water in a safe manner to allowt
water to flow through our water.
And keep in mind these particulr
rivers are very large compared to some
of our southern rivers in the s.
Those happen to have slightly
smaller channels and just not te
capacity to have the releases gg
at bigger amounts and volumes.
So once we get through Discovery Park,
then it heads out to the Delta
and then sometimes out to sea.
Some of that will be sent southd
into places in Central and Soutn
California that actually need the water.
So it's kind of a delicate bala.
Now in terms of what those water
temperatures are looking like,
anywhere from about 50 to 65 degrees where
we see some of those shallower channels,
say towards the Delta,
the water temperature just tends
to go up much, much quicker.
But take a look at American
River below Folsom,
50 degrees.
We're seeing a lot of releases
happen out of there right now jt
in anticipation of that spring .
Where we see those highest river
flows tends to be much earlier n
the season for the Sacramento,
the Feather,
the American,
but the San Joaquin and the Kings River.
We're not looking at those peak
flows potentially until June.
Now this will be a really interesting season
just based on how much snowpack we're seeing.
Our statewide average at 327%.
I kind of flew by some of those numbers
here right now in the Southern Sierra,
it's about 425% of average.
For this state and the Southern Sierra is
where a lot of the focus is of concern
because once we see that snow melting,
it heads down into a very low b,
the Central Valley,
which has a big chance for floo.
This is the Tulare basin right ,
which obviously we've been coveg
time and time again over the pat
several months just because it started
flooding early on in the season.
And we're really not looking ath
help from that at all we are se.
A nice little event happening right now,
a project that is in kind
of an emergency phase,
where they're pumping water out
of the Tulare Basin and into
places where they can store it
in some stormwater basins.
Take a look at this.
The Department of Water Resourcs
turning to below ground storagey
diverting water to more beneficial areas,
especially in the Central Valle.
The DWR was really seeking projs
that would help reduce the amout
of floodwater that was ending u,
I mean it down the Kings River
and filling this new tillary la.
And so they were looking for projects
where we could offload some of that flow.
The Fresno Irrigation District
is able to take
the excess and pump it into stoe
areas just West of the city.
The plan is to not store it thee
and later use it as surface wat,
but let it percolate into the
ground, recharge the aquifer.
So here's a look at where
our rivers stand right now,
and we've got a couple that
are at above flood stage.
And I do want to focus on
that just for a second here,
because we still have a lot of
pressure of the water coming ino
places like the Walker River,
the Carson River and also the Merced River,
the Merced River.
Well, that's a focus area of a t
of recreation because it happens
to be running into Yosemite.
So the latest amount 6.6 feet,
you can see that the Crest is going to
be later on this week at Happy Isles,
that's going to be at 8.4 feet.
And then we also have Pohono Br.
We covered this a couple weeks
ago when we had some concerns
that this was going to be a flod
stage closing parts of Yosemite
and it looks like the forecast
models again take it above flood
stage by about the beginning to.
Middle of the week.
And that's why Yosemite is sayi,
yeah, it looks like once again
with these high flows,
we're going to have to
close parts of the park.
This is what it looked
like earlier this month.
These are the latest images that
we have coming out of Yosemite.
The campgrounds that are going e
closing are going to be the Lower and
N Pines as well as housekeeping camp.
The park has doubled the amount of snow.
For this time of year,
there is a lot of melt to go on.
The one key factor that they sas
just keep checking back becauses
going to be on a day-to-day bas.
Right now they're going to
be closing part of the park,
but that could reopen if the water recedes.
Just lightly wanted to take a lk
at a couple of these reservoirs
because that's another place whe
we are seeing those releases.
Those are kind of our containers
for the snow melt.
It's the first line of defense r
reducing some of the flood risk.
This was updated today and you can see
Oroville well that has a higher capacity.
So not many releases.
The flow continues to go up periodically.
We'll see that go down just a little bit,
but not as much as places.
Like Millerton,
that's going to be a little bit
closer to the Tulare Basin.
Look at the big fluctuations that we see
over the course of not only a day or two,
but over a week or so,
an hour to hour.
We're seeing much bigger fluctuations.
They're also for pine flat.
This is just over the course of
the past couple of days really
seeing big releases happen ther,
just not as much capacity than e
of our Northern California reservoirs.
Okay,
How much snow are we talking about this?
This is what it looks like
right now up in the Sierra.
This is out towards Yosemite National Park.
And that's why they're saying
you're just going to have
to check back day by day because this
is how much snow we've not only have to
clear to even get to parts of the park,
but that's the type of snow that we're
talking about that has yet to m.
So we've got a lot of districts
that are out there.
Just trying to clear some of the parts
of the road that go to Yosemite.
You can see how they just kind
of cut through with these plows
that they're clearing Tioga Rd.
They have 45.5 miles between Cre
Flat and the entrance Tioga Pas.
Again, these are parts of the
roads that go up towards Yosemi.
So far they've cleared 11 miles.
There's a lot to go.
That's not to say you can't get there.
There's just certain roads that
are impassable because of the
fact that there's so much snow.
They've got a lot of work to do.
So when we combine a look at tht
snowpack plus the reservoirs,
this is what we're looking like.
The orange line is going to
depict our total water content,
reservoir plus snowpack.
Here's the average in the Gray.
And our 28 Western Sierra resers
plus snowpack running well above average.
Now I did want to dissect that
into region by region.
We'll start off with the Northen
California reservoirs plus Nortn
snowpack running well above ave.
You can see though we're almost
to a line here.
When we were back towards March,
we were pretty much running on average,
but now that we've combined
some late season snow.
We're starting to see some of
those numbers go up and that is
also true for the Central Sierr.
And this becomes a bigger conce.
We have smaller channels coming
out of the snowpack.
Releasing and storing that water
is a bit more challenging,
but where we have the biggest
concerns is going to be the
Southern Sierra because of how
dramatically above normal we ar.
And this is an area that feeds
directly into the Tulare Basin,
which is already,
like I said,
seeing those big issues with flooding.
And when we look at the outlook,
you can see we're in that moderate risk here
throughout the central and southern Sierra,
all the way through the centrald
southern part of the San Joaquin Valley.
This is a look at the Tulare Ba.
If you haven't looked at some
of our YouTube videos before,
I just feel like this really
illustrates so well.
How much the snowpack feeds into
the Larry Basin and the Kings R,
which is one of the biggest rivs
that we have coming out of ther.
This is going to be pine flat.
And then we have the terminus dam where
you can see that they are relea.
Once it gets to Larry Lake,
there's not much outflow.
There's no opportunity for it
to really go anywhere unless
you physically remove it or it
percolates into the ground,
which can happen,
but it can take up to about
six months for some of that
water to reach underground.
So like I said in the beginning,
we've got those programs in pla,
emergency programs that are
actually allowing people to com,
take that water, put it into groundwater
basins that need to be recharge.
You know that water underneath
our feet to allow some of that
pumping to occur later on when e
don't have as much surface wate,
we get it from underground.
Unfortunately,
it has gone through a lot of cys
of overuse and so now we've got
sustainable groundwater managem.
In place and slowly but surely coming online.
But the Department of Water Resh
is basically saying we're in all
three phases of flooding happen,
preparedness, response and reco.
And so we're really looking at e
opportunities to take advantage
of some of that excess water.
There is financial help.
It's somewhat slow to get goingr
some of those rural and disconnd
areas from access to informatio.
They're working on that.
There is challenges and opportunities
with tracking the racket,
rapid snowmelt and that groundwater recharge.
Again,
one of those programs in that
emergency phase,
we see those temperatures go up
dramatically over the past coupf
months and that's why we're in t
place where we see the peak snowmelt.
Starting to happen and the riskf
spring flood also starting to reach its
peak under a Ridge of high pres.
We're going to get a lot more wh
and brewing throughout the state over
the course of the next couple of days.
We're going to get a little relief next week,
but in the meantime we'll keep
tracking that rapid snow melt.