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My name is James Walter, and I’m a meteorologist with Water Resource Operations.
The snowpack right now is more significant than we’ve seen in the last couple of years.
Right now, here at Hannagan Meadow, there’s about 68 inches of snow on the ground, and
we probably haven’t seen that type of snow since the early 90s.
It is important to know how much water is locked up here in the snowpack because it
can help us determine how much water will flow into the reservoirs, and if we will fill
them, or if we will have excess water. When we come to the SNOTEL sites, we’re
looking to measure snow depth and what is called snow-water-equivalent, or the amount
of water that is locked up into that snow. That can give us an idea of how much water
is up here and how much will come down into the reservoirs.
Currently, we have a lot of snow on the ground right now.
We’re at 9000 feet here and we have almost 70 inches of snow, and there’s probably
about 16 to 18 inches of water locked up into that.
Below that, at 8000 feet, we found anywhere from 30 to 40 inches, and that looks similar
down to about 7500 feet with stuff starting to drop off after that.
We found snow as low as 5000 feet and a little below.
We should have a lot of runoff from this snowpack.