Snow and Clouds on the Sierra and Grass Valleys, as Detected by a High-Redshift Flash Flood
There was a winter storm warning for more than 250 miles ( 400 kilometers) of the Sierra until Sunday night or early Monday.
In the Sierra, about 10 inches (25 centimeters) of snow already had fallen Saturday afternoon at Mammoth Mountain ski resort south of Yosemite where more than 10 feet (3 meters) of snow has been recorded since early November.
The 70 mile stretch of freeway was closed from the California state line to the Nevada state line because of zero visibility. Much of the rest of I-80 was covered in chains.
The Forest Service warns that several feet of new snow and strong winds will result in dangerous avalanche conditions in the mountains west of Lake tahoe.
The National Weather Service said winds up to 50 mph were possible over the Sierra ridgetops, and could reach 100 mph by Sunday.
Up to 5 inches (13 cm) of rain was predicted for Grass Valley and the Bay Area, with up to 2 inches (5 centimeters) in the Sierra crest.
There was a flash flood warning issued on Saturday by the weather service when a storm dumped several inches of rain on the burn scars left by the fires.
The First Big Snowstorm in Northern California, and Its Expected to Last for Three to Five Years: California During its First Big Storm
More than 30,000 customers in the area were without power at one point on Saturday, but it was restored to only a few hundred late in the day. The drivers and passengers of five cars that had been trapped between downed power lines escaped unharmed, the Sacramento Bee reported.
San Francisco Bay Area officials reported power outages and fallen trees, some of which damaged cars and homes. Firefighters in Monte Rio, a small town next to the Russian River in Sonoma County, responded to reports of trees falling into homes.
Monte Rio Fire Department Chief Steve Baxman told KRON-TV that four different down trees had damaged houses in the area and that no injuries were reported.
This is our first big storm, we had several years of droughts and all the trees were dry. They’re starting to topple over because they’re filling up with water.
Snowpack across California, as of Wednesday, is running more than twice the normal amount and trending near record levels for December, especially in the northern part of the state. But experts say they are “cautiously optimistic” about what this means for the coming months.
Parts of the South and southern central US are at heightened risk for severe storms over the next few days. A slight threat for severe weather has been issued for parts of western and central Kansas and Oklahoma into northwestern Texas.
The Mississippi River Valley area is in dire need of much needed relief because of the storm which is walloping some areas with severe weather.
To the east, residents in Fargo, North Dakota, are expected to see snowfall over 6 inches and will be under a winter storm watch from late Monday night until late Wednesday night. Duluth, Minnesota, could also see 6 inches of snow and will be under a winter storm watch starting Tuesday morning.
While the storm did not break any long-standing records like last year’s snow, despite dropping several feet of snow in the highest elevations of the Sierra Nevada, Swain says mountain snowpack is now well above-average for the calendar date and that overall precipitation is relatively near average in most places.
“It looks a lot like Christmas out here,” Deutschendorf said. It stuck to everything because it didn’t come with a lot of wind. It’s like a picture postcard.”
While he noted the snow totals so far are impressive, Deutschendorf said he is “cautiously optimistic” about this precipitation putting a big dent in the state’s drought.
Snowfall and Rainfall in the Olympic Valley, California, During the Last Month of Winter, Climate Scientist Andrew Schwartz says the drought is coming to an end
“We’re Buried,” the Palisades Tahoe Ski Resort wrote on its website Sunday, sharing photos of thick snow covering the ski resort in Olympic Valley, California.
“This is definitely a storm to remember. We have gotten 7.5 feet of snow since December 1st. Plus, in just 24 hours from Saturday morning to Sunday morning, we received more than 35 inches of snow — the 6th largest snowfall total in 24 hours that we have on record,” resort operators wrote.
Winter in drought-stricken California is off to a fast start with a series of storms bringing a generous amount of rain and snow across Western states.
The leader of the University of California, Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, Andrew Schwartz says that they will need more snow at the lab. It is where he and others measure how much water is available for the state.
Through the winter months, the high-elven snowpack helps to ease the effects of drought by storing water and releasing it in the spring. In an average year, 30% of California’s fresh water supply comes from the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada.
With the multiyear megadrought, the snowpack in the Sierras had been at alarmingly low levels, while reservoirs, which are replenished by spring snow melt, are still below the historical average.
The sequence of storms in the Sierra Nevada over the last week has been remarkable, though it would have been considered unremarkable if it hadn’t been for it, according to a climate scientist at UCLA. Over the last decade, California has trended much drier than usual, so the recent back-to-back precipitation events have been a significant change in pace.
It was definitely a good-news storm, even though it caused some short-term disruption, but it also dropped a little water in areas that really need it because of long-term drought and climate change driven aridification. “And, importantly, it dropped that water as snow, which is accumulating over weeks and months as snowpack, rather than warm rains that immediately turn into runoff.”
Even though California is mired in a yearslong dry spell, it continues to face an unprecedented water crisis. Most of the state is still experiencing some level of drought. And on Wednesday, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California declared a regional drought emergency for Southern California to prepare for the fourth consecutive dry year.
“It’s like a football game – we’ve scored a touchdown in the first quarter, but there’s three quarters left before we can really determine what the game outcome is going to be,” Schwartz said. If we get to March and April, and we are sitting at the top of the hill, then we can start to relax. We can start to celebrate a little bit.
In addition, Swain says there has been a tilt in the seasonal outlook toward drier-than-average conditions across much of California and the lower Colorado River Basin, which will see additional unprecedented water cuts in effect in the new year, for January through spring.
He said that it would not bode well for long-term relief of the water crisis on the Colorado River if there is no rain by the end of the year.
If anything, Schwartz said, this is the time “we need to be conserving our water more and maybe even bumping conservation efforts because this isn’t a guarantee of a full deep winter.”