We're going to take you now
live to that press conference
and see what they're saying.
The majority of our snowpack really only
came from a couple storms in December,
and the small amounts of snowfall
that have happened since then.
Haven't been enough to outpace
the amount of snowmelt that the
April 1st date so late April 1st,
as in today it's always that
important mark in snowpack monitoring,
because that is typically when
our snowpack is at its peak.
In terms of snow water content.
Unfortunately, the northern Sierra Nevada
experienced its peak snowpack in mid January.
After April 1st we start to shift our focus
from snowpack building to snowpack melting.
And we have less snow right now
than we did last year at this time.
However, our watersheds look to be in
better condition this year for that
snow to actually melt and runoff and
hopefully not soak up into those dry
soils as much as they did last year.
My team is actively taking in all
of this rainfall data snowfall
data and incorporating it into the
different models that we have in
our forecasting water supply,
so that we'll know roughly how
much water will have to fill up our
reservoirs during the spring and summer.
We've partnered with the Airborne
Snow Observatory's to get a better
picture of the snowpack,
a full picture of the snowpack and our
team is fully leveraging that data to
improve our water supply forecasting.
Accuracy unfortunately,
though,
our latest snowmelt forecasts are
only about 44% of average.
Lake Oroville is only about 47% full
and Lake Shasta,
which is our largest surface water
reservoir in the state,
is only 38% full roughly statewide or
statewide reservoir storage as of this
morning is right around 70% of average
or only about 48% of its total capacity.
Which is actually right where
we were on April 1st of 2015.
Alright,
that is Sean de Guzman, who is now the
guy who took over for Frank Gehrki,
who's puts the literally I'll
say it in layman's terms,
puts the stick in the ground
to figure out the snowpack.
Rob 44% of average.
I know I can hear you calculating
even as we speak.
What do you think of all that?
Well, he just threw out a very
important date. He just said 2015.
Well, that is you said that period
of of the mega drought that we
went through by some accounts.
That was the worst drought in
California more than 1000 years.
Yeah, so you know snowpack is part of this.
He did mention some positive news,
which I think is really important when
he mentions the watersheds looking
like like they're in better shape.
What that means is that the
soils are a lot more moist,
meaning that whatever melts has
an easier path to get to rivers,
creeks, streams,
ultimately down into those reservoirs
where it can be captured and stored,
and then used how they choose
to use it for power generation.
For water supply and all these other things.
What happened last year is
that it was so dry they had a.
Snow pack and they had a forecast
and it was a total mismatch
because what happened was we got
hit with super warm temperatures.
If you remember the big Pacific
Northwest heat wave where we
hit 160 degrees in Portland,
OR of all places we were on the
southern end of that in places like
reading in the Shasta watershed got
hammered and a lot of the snowpack
never made it into Lake Shasta.
So there's a bunch of things that
are going to happen between where
we are now and the ultimate numbers
that they have to work with.
You know,
there's you know there's some positive news,
but you could see it with your own eyes.
Walt, yeah,
this is a this is a pretty rough day.
It's a tough 144%, but that's and you
mentioned 2015 earlier in this broadcast.
The last time we were up
there and saw dry Pat.
So yeah, OK so alright for us.
Anything better.
Any better news for us for
tonight in the weekend?
Yeah, you know what I am seeing Walt
is that we just gotta move on here.
What we have is what we have.
The first thing I do want to
show you is remember it's not.
That one location or it's
not 1 section of the Sierra.
It's the whole amount range,
and there's some better news there.
So let's go ahead and start off with that.
This is our Sierra snowpack
as far as we can see.
Statewide northern Sierra.
Really big,
huge lack of snow for their location.
They said 44%.
That's in line with what we thought of right
around 43% southerns here is about the same.
So as the state, we're well below average
and we'll just have to see how it ends up.
I remember him a couple years ago where we
got 3 inches of rain in May, so who knows?
There's still some time left, but.
Statistically speaking,
we just can't rely on
something extreme like that.