LOS ANGELES (KNX) — California is headed into a colder and wetter 2022, with more record-breaking snow and rainfall at the year’s end.
California state water officials will conduct a snow survey on Thursday, and were expected to find the state’s mountain snowpack to have grown by nearly 160% of the average for the date, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.
It’s a good sign for a dehydrated California, which has grappled with a three-year-long drought. Crucial reservoirs, like Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville in Northern California, are expected to be at least partially replenished due to runoff from recent storms.
“December has been great in that we have a fantastic snowpack started,” state climatologist Miek Anderson with the Department of Water Resources told The Chronicle.
“But if you have the perception that this [weather] has fixed everything, it didn’t,” he cautioned.” “We dug a really deep hole with this drought, and we have a really long way to go to get out of it.”
Reversals in fortune have happened before. In January 2013, the snowpack measured 137% of average, only for winter to end at 47%, according to The Chronicle.
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