Survey Finds California's Sierra Nevada Snowpack At 29% Of Historic Averages - SF Chronicle

[hatrack]

California snow surveyors found nothing to survey Tuesday during their last check of a dwindling Sierra snowpack. State officials renewed calls for voluntary water conservation to head off rationing after the annual May 1 survey found the Sierra snowpack at just 29 percent of normal statewide, the lowest since 1988.

Frank Gehrke and Dave Hart of the state Department of Water Resources didn't even bother to take their measuring devices out of their vehicle before they hiked out into a barren field near Highway 50 at Phillips Station, a roadside stop established in 1859 at the 6,800-foot level.

Patches of white lingered on the hills around them, and the Sierra peaks were snowcapped in the distance. But all the surveyors spotted on the ground at Phillips Station were lodgepole pine cones and a few scattered dog droppings. The meadow was under 67.4 inches of snow on the same date last year, double the historic average. "This is definitely a dry year, no doubt about that," Hart said.

That was bracing news, but hardly a surprise, for California water agencies. They are just beginning to promote such voluntary measures as nighttime landscape watering, low-flush toilets and water-saving washing machines. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, manager of the Hetch Hetchy system and supplier for 2.4 million Bay Area water users, hopes to see a 10 percent reduction in usage. Besides a diminished Sierra runoff, the system faces the added problem of seismic troubles at its Calaveras reservoir in Alameda County, which in effec took out 60,000 acre-feet of storage capacity. An acre-foot is enough water to supply a household of four for one year.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/02/SNOW.TMP