Sierra Snow Pack ???

This is a good chart for high level:

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=PLOT_SWC

But… if this series of storms pans out then we could have a near “Miracle March,” so stay tuned.

Yeah—Southern Sierra is worse than the North this year.  And while these storms are helping, we need a LOT of precipitation to get that 38% up to normal…

Ah, that 1982-1983 line.  We did a ski trip from UC Berkeley that winter.  76 inches in 24 hours snowed us in for two days.

Interesting chart… thanks…. I assume that blue line is this year?

But I wonder what exactly the sections of the Sierra that they define as North, Central and South? Or, where are the measuring stations for each?

This website has some snowpack data as well.

https://www.postholer.com/google-map/Pacific-Crest-Trail/1#

you might need to go to the little cog wheel in the upper left and select the “snow depth” skin to show what currently looks like.

https://cdec.water.ca.gov/snow/current/snow/index.html

It takes some poking around to get familiar on this site but it has all the information you want once you figure out how to find what you are after. Every other snow depth information source for California gets their information from this one. You can see both real time remote sensors and data from manual surveys where humans go out and take measurements. Where specifically are you interested in?

Specifically interested in Mt. Whitney area and north along the JMT to the high areas of King’s Canyon

Thanks,

The snowline was down to 3000′ in Santa Barbara the other day. Today we went hiking in some 4000′ mountains in the snow. Kids were sledding and making snowmen. I’m sure the Sierras got dumped on these past few days.

https://mammothweather.com Indicates maybe 2’ of snow up on the crest from this storm system.

We’ve got a week of storms stacking up again.  With luck, we may actually get out of extreme drought conditions…

10″ so far in Arroyo Grande, Ca since Oct.

Enough for sagebrush so far, not enough for oak trees long term.

Hoping for more. Miracle March means wildflowers.

I see the southern Sierra is still at about 43% of April 1 normal…

But would love to know what area that actually is… how do they define the southern area? Is that Whitney north to, say, Bishop Pass? Or is that Whitey and south? Big difference if you’re wanting to do the JMT early in the season…

I consider Mt Whitney to be southern \Sierra.  Bishop Pass is more central.  This postholer page will show snow depth charts vs average for different well defined sections of the Sierra: https://www.postholer.com/snow/Pacific-Crest-Trail/1

Note on those charts, Crabtree Meadow is next to Mt Whitney on the southern end of the JMT. Tuolume Meadows is in Yosemite at the northern end of the JMT.  That said, the Sierras go further north past Lake Tahoe, but the elevations are lower, but this doesn’t mean there won’t be a lot of snow in spring.  The JMT parts are what hikers tend to focus on since that contains most of the highest passes and peaks.

From those charts, it looks like the entire JMT has about half the average level.  Though we may still get some more snow that can still change things, the odds of that are lowering as time passes.

Usually, April 1st is used as the date to evaluate what the snow pack is when planning a date for a JMT/PCT hike. That said, right now, it looks very favorable to an earlier entry.

The JMT FB group always says the Southern graph covers most of the JMT to approximately Donahue Pass.   Unfortunately, I can’t back that up with a definitive source or map.

I don’t think there is a standard definition of southern, central, and southern Sierra…  I suspect it depends on who and which agency is crafting the charts… so probably need to see the definition for those areas for each chart. I guess it all depends of perspective. Like… if you are in San Francisco, you talk about it as being northern CA… but if you look at a map, you could make an argument for it being central California.

Thanks for the link Minor… that give a good idea of the conditions of the JMT for sure… as for Face Book? What’s that… never heard of it :)

Believe it or not, have never been on Face Book… I’m of the generation that took our phone numbers out of the white pages about 3 decades ago for privacy :)))

https://www.nps.gov/yose/blogs/update-for-march-17-2021.htm

since a picture is worth a thousand words. You can extrapolate a bit from this blog, esp. if you go back a bit and see earlier reports. These ranger really get around!

“I don’t think there is a standard definition of southern, central, and southern Sierra…  I suspect it depends on who and which agency is crafting the charts… so probably need to see the definition for those areas for each chart. ”

The distinction between northern, central, and southern Sierra Nevada has little to do with the distinction between northern vs southern California.

The northern Sierra do not even extend that far north. Geologically speaking the “lower Cascades” extend into Northern California, and Mt Lassen is the southernmost of the volcanic peaks of the Cascades.

And speaking of San Francisco, legend has it that the Sierra Buttes were created by Paul Bunyan when he dropped a few shovels full of dirt after he dug out the San Francisco Bay.

Bruce… I think you missed the point… it was a point about perspective… an analogy… not a 1 to 1 link between northern CA and northern Sierra…

the point is perspective and that depending on one’s perspective people and gov agencies have different definitions of what southern, central and norther Sierra means…. similar (analogy) as to people’s how people’s perspective tends to define what they  think of as Northern and Southern CA…

But let’s drop it… maybe just a bit to subtle for this forum…

DWR D

I’ve always understood Northern Sierra to from Tahoe to Sierra Buttes, Central Sierra from Tahoe to Yosemite, and Southern Sierra south of Yosmite…so basically,

Northern=Tahoe

Central=Yosemite

Southern=SEKI.

But that may be too subtle for the people in this forum.  At least that’s what DWRD says.//