Excerpt:
All the rain and snow are undoubtedly good news for California’s water supply, but they’re unlikely to end the drought altogether.
If you’re looking for a silver lining to the punishing storms sweeping California, look no further than the state’s snowpack.
As of Tuesday, California’s mountain snow held more than twice the water content that’s considered average for this time of year, The Times’s Mike Ives reported. That matters because as the Sierra Nevada snow melts in the warmer months, it typically provides about 30 percent of California’s water supply.
“With the snowpack the way it is right now, roughly around 200 percent for most areas of the Sierra Nevada, that’s a great thing for California,” Chris Hintz, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Sacramento, said on Wednesday.
With the news of the replenished snowpack, you may be wondering what kind of impact the recent storms will have on the current drought, which began in 2020 and has stretched through the three driest years on record in the state. Could these downpours be enough to end our dry spell?
Well, experts say that the atmospheric rivers hitting the Golden State will undoubtedly help but probably won’t be enough to reverse the drought altogether…
