Snowpack is ...hard to see!

Caught these as I flew in to SFO yesterday. If you had any doubt about how dry a year it was, these should convince you. The first is Banner, Ritter, and the Minarets, with Garnet, Thousand Island, and Waugh lakes in clear view...through the smoke and haze of the big fire.



The second one is of the Illilouette Canyon, with Mt. Starr King in view as the three bright white granite domes just left of center. The ridge in the back is the area around Isberg and Post Peak Passes.




I could not see any snow at all on Red Peak Pass...

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2013 10:43AM by balzaccom.

Scary. I hope we get more snow this year. The smoke looks really bad.

It really wasn't a dry year as rainfall years go (July-June). The problem was that most of it fell in the early part of the wet season in November and December. With minimal precipitation after that, the snowpack melted throughout the winter and wasn't replenished. The result was that most it was melted by mid spring.

At my location in central Calaveras County I had 85% of average rainfall, the 6th driest in the past 10 years, not dry statistically at all. A friend in Placerville told me he had 95% of average. The Yosemite area, being farther south, may have been drier.

If November and December had been dry and March and April had been wet with totals being the same, no one would be saying this was a dry year.

IMO, California doesn't handle its water very well. Any year in which all areas of the state don't receive 100% of average precipitation you hear the cries of drought begin. Erratic precipitation in both amount and time of the year is the norm for California. If we can't comfortably survive on 75% of average then we have a problem.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2013 12:30PM by Calaveras.

At my house in S. CA, last year we got around 40 percent of the average precipitation amounts. Right now I can't find the actual numbers but according to an article I recently saw in the Wawona news site, last year and so far this year are historically some of the lowest precipitation amounts that they have seen in Yosemite. If I find the actual numbers, I will post them.