Light snowpack doesn't bode well for parched West

BERTHOUD PASS, Colo. — Though much of the East Coast is shaking off a major blizzard, the snowpack high in the western mountains is looking small, and that doesn't bode well for the parched region.

A report out this week found virtually all of California remains in drought. Utah, Arizona and New Mexico are also abnormally dry. Colorado fares slightly better, but its snowpack still far lags where it usually sits this time of year.

Scientists fanned out this week across the West's towering mountains to measure how much water is locked in the snow. The end of January is about the halfway point for the snowfall season.

In Colorado, "we're not off to the greatest start," said Brian Domonkos, a hydrologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. "We have room to make it up, but future weather plays a large role."

Friday morning, Domonkos and other scientists painstakingly measured the snow depth on 11,307-foot-high Berthoud Pass, Colo., using the depth and the weight of the snow to calculate how much water it holds. There's nearly 40 inches of snow atop the pass, but the depth matters less than the water content. This sugary, dry snow holds relatively little water.

To conduct the survey, scientists plunge a shark-toothed, hollow metal pole into the snow until it hits the frozen ground below. Withdrawing the pole, which contains a core sample, the scientists weigh the snow on a hand-held scale. That allows them to calculate how much water it contains. Icy snow is dense and contains lots of water, while powdery snow contains little water.

All those snowflakes add up. Colorado gets about 80% of its annual precipitation in the form of snow, and the mountains act as a natural reservoir of melting ice that flows downstream all summer. Snow from the Rockies finds its way west, where it eventually serves thirsty customers, farmers and businesses as far away as Mexico.

Today, the snow at this site is a little deeper than average and contains an about-average amount of water. It's lower than last year, however, and 2014 was far from the snowiest year on record. Statewide, Colorado has only about 81% of its normal snowpack for this time of year, compared with 96% last year.

The manual snow measurements back up hundreds of automated sensors deployed across the West. The sensors use a large rubber pillow to measure the snow's weight, transmitting that data back in near-real time, so backcountry skiers, road crews and scientists can quickly check totals during a storm.

The manual measurements use the same kind of equipment federal scientists have been using in some places for a century, giving them highly accurate and reliable data.

"It's a pretty simple but very trustworthy way of getting a measurement of how much water is in the snowpack," Domonkos said.

In California, the season's second snow survey of the season on Thursday was quite disheartening.

"The absence of precipitation in January, normally California's wettest month, has combined with warmer-than-average temperatures to produce a dismally meager snowpack for a drought-stricken state," the California Department of Water Resources said in a statement Thursday.

Statewide, California's snow water equivalent was a meager 25% of the historical average, the department reported. Echo Summit, about 90 miles east of Sacramento, had just 12% of its average water content for this time of year.

Drought experts are concerned especially since hopes were high after a wet December:

"A great deal of optimism about the California situation was lost during January," said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb.

Several cities in Northern California, including San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento, are all on track for their driest January on record. San Francisco has received no rain this month, the National Weather Service reports, the first time that's ever happened since records began in the 1850s.

"This kind of January was the worst thing that could have possibly happened on the heels of such a great December," said climatologist Mark Svoboda of the drought center.

As of Thursday's weekly U.S. Drought Monitor, 98% of the state is in some form of drought, and the future doesn't bode well. Even if February and March bring a good amount of participation to California, drought issues will continue, Fuchs said.

"The deficits are too large after 3-plus years of drought now that a good couple of months would help but not eliminate drought from the state (or the West)," he said. "One of the biggest issues we are seeing is the lack of snowfall in the higher elevations. Places where there should be feet of snow on the ground are bare."

Rice reported from McLean, Va.