Wednesday April 6, 2022
The Orange County Register —
Seven years ago, during the height of the last drought, California Gov. Jerry Brown stood on the barren slopes of the Sierra Nevada, watching as engineers measured the worst snowpack in state history.
Snow measurements taken Friday, April 1, aren’t quite so bleak, but they remain devastatingly low: The snowpack — which provides a third of California’s water supply — is 38% of average statewide. And at the same bone-dry spot where Brown stood in 2015, at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe, state engineers today found a shrinking patch of snow that contained only 4% of the location’s average water content.
After the Sierra Nevada’s driest January, February and March for more than a century, the scene painted a picture of a deepening drought.
“Today is actually very evocative of 2015,” Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources said against a backdrop of brown grass at Phillips Station.
“You need no more evidence than standing here on this very dry landscape to understand some of the challenges we’re facing here in California,” Nemeth said.