SNOW BOOSTS WATER OUTLOOK PACKED FLAKES IN SIERRA NEVADA COULD HELP COUNTERACT EFFECTS OF DRY WINTER.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

While Los Angeles' rain totals are lagging, snow levels in the Sierra Nevada remain above average, continuing a promising start to the year's water outlook, state officials said Friday.

Total rainfall this season in Los Angeles is 3.65 inches, well below the normal rainfall total of 6.47 by this point in the season, weather specialists at the National Weather Service in Oxnard said.

But Northern California's snowpack on Friday measured about 119 percent of normal at Echo Summit off Highway 50, 90 miles east of Sacramento near Lake Tahoe, the Department of Water Resources said.

For the Sierra region as a whole, the snowpack measured about 115 percent of normal, said Jeff Cohen, DWR spokesman.

``It just shows that the snowpack is holding its own despite the dry periods we've had in January,'' Cohen said. ``As far as the water supply, we've had some good years and reservoir conditions are good, so there shouldn't be any impacts.''

The statewide snowpack is about 115 percent of average. It was 136 percent of normal in the northern Sierra, from Mount Shasta to the Feather River; 110 percent in the central Sierra, from the Yuba River and Lake Tahoe Basin to the Merced River; and 101 percent in the southern Sierra, from the San Joaquin River south.

The monthly surveys help gauge how much water will be available for California farms, cities and hydroelectricity next summer.

``In our major watersheds in Northern California, rain and snow are both above normal,'' Cohen said, adding that both the Lake Shasta and State Water Project watersheds ``are both coming along with good amounts'' of water content in the snow.

Lake Shasta was at 116 percent of normal as of Thursday; Lake Oroville at 101 percent; and Folsom Lake at 109 percent of average.

Last month, DWR recorded a ``tremendous start to the winter'' with 133 percent of normal, Cohen said.

The last three winters also started out promising, until the snow all but stopped in January. All three wound up below average, until a rare series of storms pounded the northern and central Sierra last April.

``We're tracking closer to average than we were last year, when we were above average for the first part of the winter,'' Cohen said.

The water content of the snowpack is ``a good amount to have in the snow pack at this time of year,'' he said, and February often brings as much snow as January.

DWR meteorologists predicted more precipitation returning to the region in the next few days.

More than a third of the state's drinking and irrigation water comes from Sierra snow, while snow-fed hydroelectric plants produce about a quarter of California's power. The amount of water that actually will be delivered to farmers and communities depends not only on the snow accumulation, but on water stored in reservoirs and how much water managers think they need to hold in the event the string of dry winters continues.

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