{"id":198002,"date":"2026-02-28T11:05:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T11:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/198002\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T11:05:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T11:05:26","slug":"california-snowpack-grew-after-february-storms-but-remains-below-average","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/198002\/","title":{"rendered":"California snowpack grew after February storms, but remains below average"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"February<\/a>Snow only partially covers the meadow where the California Department of Water Resources conducted the third manual snowpack survey of the 2026 season at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada.\u202f(Photo by
Xavier Mascare\u00f1as\/DWR)<\/p>\n

California\u2019s vital snowpack grew after February\u2019s storms, but is still only two-thirds of normal with just one month left in the rainy season.<\/p>\n

The Department of Water Resources<\/a> conducted its the third traditional manual survey of the season on Friday, finding 28 inches at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada. That was just 47% of average, but statewide the figure was 66% \u2013 up from 59% on Jan. 30<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the storms we saw in mid-February were some of the coldest and best snow-producing storms we have seen since 2023, they were not enough to get us back to average conditions,\u201d said Andy Reising, manager of DWR\u2019s Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Unit. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe snowpack is in better shape than it was one month ago, but we only have a month left of our snow-accumulation season and time is rapidly running out to catch up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On average, the largest snow-producing months in the Sierra Nevada are December, January, February and March. Historically, the snowpack peaks around April 1, after which the snow melts and water runs off into California\u2019s rivers and reservoirs.<\/p>\n

While the snowpack remains below average, major reservoirs statewide are currently at 122% percent of average thanks to \u201catmospheric river\u201d storms in prior years.<\/p>\n

On average, the Sierra snowpack supplies about 30% of California\u2019s water needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Snow only partially covers the meadow where the California Department of Water Resources conducted the third manual snowpack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,24374,61917,124,36221],"class_list":["post-198002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-department-of-water-resources","tag-phillips-station","tag-sierra-nevada","tag-snowpack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}