Study Finds Snowfall in California’s Sierra Nevada to Be Lowest in 500 Years
Source: New York Times
The snow that blanketed the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California last winter, and that was supposed to serve as an essential source of fresh water for the drought-stricken state, was at its lowest levels in the last 500 years, according to a new study.
The paper, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, used tree-ring data from centuries-old blue oaks to provide historical context for the mountain range’s diminished snowfall. As of April 1, the snowpack levels were just 5 percent of their 50-year historical average.
The paper is the first to create a model that describes temperature and precipitation levels on the Sierra Nevada that extends centuries before researchers started measuring snow levels each year.
“The 2015 snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is unprecedented,” said Valerie Trouet, one of the authors of the study and a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona. “We expected it to be bad, but we certainly didn’t expect it to be the worst in the past 500 years.”
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Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/science/california-snow-report.html?_r=0
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Thanks for the thread, jpak.
I have no doubt John Wesley Powell was correct, it's too bad they trashed him.
Thanks for the link, mpcamb. 
as Mother Nature slaps California in the face!
& recommend!!
Jerry Brown is still allowing (yet another) rogue corporation (Nestle') to buy water from the state.
I've been unable to learn what the State receives for its water (Maybe you'll have better luck: Brown's office - (916) 445-2841.), but do know (per the Council of Canadians) that Nestle' pays British Columbia the sum of $2.25 (not a typo) for each million litres of water it takes from that province.
One million litres equals 264,172 gallons.
No sense in worrying about it now. Enjoy the last of the good times. Things are only going to get worse as the human population continues to multiply out of control. I give us fifteen years of decline before things really go south.
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/gallery/landsubsidence-poland.html
I lived in and around Silicon Valley for 18 years and the hottest I remember it being at night was 80, one time only. One of my good friends lives in the Santa Cruz mountains where it's usually much cooler due to the fog that comes in at night. She said it's been 90 at night for a week and got up to 101 during the day. Usually 85 during the day is considered a warm summer day. She has 2 horses, so has given up her grass in order to meet the water restrictions. The resevoirs are also ridiculously, worringly, low. But, obviously, climate change is a hoax. 
