About a third of the state relies on mountain snowpack for its water supply.
December and January were exceptionally dry. So even with some recent snowstorms in the Sierra, John King of the Department of Water Resources says the snowpack never reached its normal volume:
KING: "We've been off the mark since the beginning of the season, and it's been really difficult to make it up. Snow is melting and we're at conditions that are well below normal."
Still, the Department of Water Resources
expects to be able to allocate 60 percent of the water requested
this year by districts. That's because an abnormally wet season
last year has kept many reservoirs fairly full. This water goes to
more than 25 million Californians and nearly a million acres of
irrigated farmland.
