{"id":249979,"date":"2026-04-03T11:36:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T11:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/249979\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T11:36:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T11:36:19","slug":"californias-dire-snowpack-signals-early-fire-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/249979\/","title":{"rendered":"California\u2019s dire snowpack signals early fire season"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rachel Becker<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California\u2019s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though precipitation to date has been near average<\/a>, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March\u2019s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state\u2019s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages<\/a> and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month\u2019s heat wave.<\/p>\n

But experts now warn that California\u2019s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we\u2019ve had \u2014\u00a0 maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,\u201d joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. \u201cWe\u2019re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

State data reports that California\u2019s snowpack is closing out the season<\/a> at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California\u2019s major reservoirs.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

O<\/a>nly the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year\u2019s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average<\/a> on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everyone’s anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,\u201d said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there\u2019s much more time for something like that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s pretty bizarre up here\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire<\/a> in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,\u201d Drennan said. \u201cPeople are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means we can get more work done,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin\u2019s south shore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space<\/a> and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread \u2014 from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles \u2014 even lawn furniture stacked against a house.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn years past, I wouldn’t even think of raking and clearing until May,\u201d Goldberg said. \u201cBut my yard’s completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018A haystack fire\u2019<\/p>\n

Battalion chief David Acu\u00f1a, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year\u2019s snowpack.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Climate change has been remaking California\u2019s fire seasons into fire years. And California\u2019s recent average<\/a> to abundant water<\/a> years have fueled what Acu\u00f1a called \u201cbumper crops of vegetation and brush.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of California is like a haystack. And if you\u2019ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there’s layers of fuel,\u201d Acu\u00f1a said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acu\u00f1a wasn\u2019t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How this year\u2019s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine<\/a>. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis,\u201d Abatzoglou said, \u201cis yet another stress test for the future in the state.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Rachel Becker, CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. California clocked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,535],"class_list":["post-249979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249979","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=249979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}