California Drought Continues Despite Spring Sierra Snow

California’s drought continues, with the state’s snowpack only at 35% of the historical average, despite heavy snows in the Sierra Nevada that doubled the entire snowfall for the first quarter of the year.

The most recent weather system brought along impressive mountain snow to the #Sierra for this time of year, increasing the well below-average snowpack numbers. Here is a look at the most recent snowpack data, courtesy of @CA_DWR 🏔️ #CAwx pic.twitter.com/4XcKKumx9P

— NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) April 23, 2022

The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

The recent storm that brought wet weather to the Bay Area last week dumped an “impressive” amount of snow on the Sierra Nevada for the month of April, said the National Weather Service.

The storm dumped 31.1 inches of snow, increasing April’s snowfall total to 76 inches — “almost double what we received January through March,” the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab tweeted Friday.

…

This month’s storms also helped bring precipitation totals above average for the month of April in the Bay Area. But it wasn’t enough to reverse the state’s drought, meteorologists said.

The state has been in a drought for the past three years, ever since the wet winters of 2017 and 2018. Over the weekend, record temperatures were recorded in Los Angeles, as a heat wave rocked Southern California.

Los Angeles International Airport is the first record to fall with this heatwave. Their daily high of 86 F today beat out the old record of 85 F set just two years ago (2020).

The heat continues into Monday before cooling commences Tuesday.#cawx #laheat #socal pic.twitter.com/sFFKEmD2J5

— NWS Los Angeles (@NWSLosAngeles) April 25, 2022

Despite a staggering historic budget surplus, California’s Democrat-run government has done almost nothing recently to increase the state’s capacity to store water runoff from the mountains. While the state’s population and water needs have continued to grow, California has declined to increase the number of dams and reservoirs, bowing to environmental concerns about their impact.

California residents are expected to face water restrictions this year as the state struggles to manage with less water.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.