Re: March Snow Survey Results

The March 1 snow surveys recorded 90% of average water content for the Tuolumne drainage and 84% of average for the Merced drainage, with a maximum depth of 9 1/2 feet of snow at Grace Meadow.

I heard on the radio today that we will need to be at 140% to be "okay" this year. They explained that we had to make up for the near-empty reservoirs (like Lake Don Pedro) in order to attain "normal" status. Of course, if we get THAT much rain and snow, than everyone will be under avalanches or floodwater.

B

Bee wrote:

> I heard on the radio today that we will need to be at 140% to
> be "okay" this year.

Perhaps the water planners need to go back to school and learn what average actually means?

Well, it beats the 40% of average or whatever you guys had at the end of January.

But we're a little behind. Boca and Stampede reservoirs are pretty close to empty, even with a 100 percent snowpack these lakes won't recover anytime soon, and Lake Tahoe won't be allowed to go much below where it is now before the people who own the government and live there start screaming. Bee's right, 140 percent would help a great deal, we're not in a drought because of natural causes...we simply have too many people who don't live in the Sierra taking almost all of its water.

Vince:>we simply have too many people who don't live in the Sierra taking almost all of its water<

Egg-zackly!!! There is a community called "El Dorado Hills" not too far from me, and its been proven over and again: there is no groundwater for this community, so they must rely exclusively on Folsom lake, which relies entirely on the American River, which gets all her water from..yup...Sierra. Even tho I went on a huge rant about global warming, I am in complete agreement that most of the UN-natural disaster about drought is man-made.

B

It's a matter of time before desalinization comes to a California coast near you, powered by crude oil from the rigs off shore.

CA won't have a choice.

I thought that So-Cal gave desalinization a try?

B

I always though desalinization would be a good candidate for wind power application but apparently it requires tremedous amounts of energy and is also poor in efficiency in that most of the original water is discharged back into the sea.

Jim

I think you have to boil the water as if you're cooking whiskey mash, and recover the pure water out of a cooling coil, and in your boiling pot is left over all the minerals (mainly salt). It's very inefficient and therefore not done on a large scale, but all of the Persian Gulf states use it out of necessity (plus they can afford it).

A water world we live on and we don't have enough water, and we're not smart enough to figure out how to get it. Maybe we should do some stem cell experiments and genetically engineer gills?