FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — California surveyors are plunging poles into the Sierra Nevada snowpack, taking the season's first measurement by hand as the state flirts with a sixth year of drought.
They will do the survey Tuesday near Lake Tahoe.
Electronic monitors in late December showed the snow's water content at just 72 percent of normal. That dipped even lower during the holiday weekend.
Since October, ample rain has fallen swelling reservoirs, but the snowpack has lagged. The mountain snowpack is vital because it provides roughly a third of California's water.
Doug Carlson of the state's Department of Water Resources cautions that the drought clearly hasn't ended.
He says groundwater supplies are depleted, and some residents with dry wells in Tulare County still live on bottled drinking water.
