Monday February 27, 2023
KTVU —
Across the Sierra, the dig out continued on Sunday.
The region has been hit with four feet of snow over the last few days, and an incoming blizzard is expected to drop several more feet on the area through Wednesday.
It’s bad news for those traveling to Tahoe, but good news for California’s reservoir system.
“Each successive storm is going to help us.” said Andrew Schwartz, the lead scientist at the UC Berkeley Snow Lab. “We’re looking really good moving forward. We’ve effectively eliminated a lot of our short term drought.”
According to Schwartz the Sierra snow pack provides about 30% of California’s freshwater. It refills the state reservoirs as it melts in the spring.
A series of atmospheric rivers in December, followed by all the recent snow, has helped California slowly bring its reservoir levels up amid a historic drought.