I expect that most i not all of you reading this blog have heard or read stories on the current El Ninõ event and the potential for a wet winter in California. A day or so ago, I saw that California was going to a see two or three precipitation events this week. I know that California depends on a good snow pack in the mountains for their water needs. I was wondering what today's snowfall forecast (January 6th) is. I decided to focus on the San Joaquin Valley/Hanford California region because I believe that is where Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park are located (see my posts on the Rim Fire). I went to the website of the US National Weather Service San Joaquin/Hanford California, and seeing that they have a twitter site that is easy to work with and link to, I found the following snowfall forecast dated January 6, 2015 at 5:32 AM:
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| obtained on January 6, 2016 from
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So it seems that the mountains are forecast to get a good dose of snowfall today. Ok, I was wondering what the current snow depth is in San Joaquin mountains. I went to the US National Weather Service California Nevada River Forecast Center, where you will see a nice interactive mapping package on their home page. I am interested in the current snow depth and took a couple of screen shots of the snow depth in the San Joaquin Mountains and surrounding areas. The data is known as point data (depth in inches) and may be a little hard to read. But you will get an idea of the current snow depth (as of January 6, 2016 at 7:45 AM PST). The mapping layers available to you are updated frequently so what you will see will be different from what I am sharing below. I was happy to see some very decent snow depth totals (as of January 6, 2016, 7:45 AM PST). For the second image, I zoomed in to focus on Stanistlaus and Yosemite.
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| Snow Depth on January 6, 2016, 7:45 AM PST obtained on January 6, 2016 from http://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/ |
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| Snow Depth from NOHRSC on January 6, 2015 obtained on January 6, 2016 from http://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/ |
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| Snow Depth from NOHRSC on January 6, 2016 obtained on January 6, 2016 from http://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/ |
Now the maps are nice. I wanted a little more information to share, perhaps something quantitative. And I was not disappointed as I found this December 25th tweet from the NWS CNRFC where they say that the Sierra snowpack on December 25, 2015 was 110 percent of average while one year prior (December 25, 2014), the Sierra snowpack was 55 percent of average.
Difference in #Sierra snowpack now (~110% avg) vs 1 yr ago (55% avg)! Thanks cold Dec storms. #drought #cawx #nvwx pic.twitter.com/trHgWWqwxg
— NWS CNRFC (@NWSCNRFC) December 25, 2015
I certainly hope that the prospects for a snowy and rainy California winter from the El Ninõ continue as forecast. However, I also understand that California will need more than one wet winter to come out of the drought.
Stay safe. Heed advisories from your National Weather Service office. Turn around, don't drown.
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