Hydrology Update After Recent Storm | News

Some snow seasons are more impressive than others. It’s been a slow start to the snow season this year, but our latest snow storm did boost our water supply somewhat. Experts say we still have a lot of ground to make up though.

The National Weather Service is hosting a hydrology briefing once a month and their latest one was on February 7.

They say most of our stream flows are near normal and our reservoirs are in excellent condition, but our snowpack is struggling despite the recent snow. We would need multiple storms like the one that moved through over the weekend to reach normal. It’s not impossible to do, but chances are low of having an average snow year.

"This year has not been as great we'll say, but it would take multiple years of being in a drought for us to really start to be concerned,” says Dawn Johnson from the National Weather Service.

Parts of western Nevada are currently abnormally dry, but not in a drought. The extended forecast is looking wetter, especially around the February 18.

Johnson says if we have a dry late winter and spring we could be leaning towards being in a drought again.

Our snowpack is currently at 65% of median at this date, but if we failed to get anything more we would be at 45% of median for the entire snow season. This includes the Truckee, Tahoe, Carson, and Walker basin combined. The southern Sierra is doing better than the northern Sierra.

“In an El Niño pattern, we do tend to see wetter conditions down across southern California and southern Nevada and into Arizona and the overall pattern is still favoring these areas, and we have seen that with these last few storms,” said Johnson.

The National Weather Service will have another briefing on March 7.