California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) today released the first of the season’s surveys of snow conditions, an indicator of how much runoff we can expect to fill reservoirs in the spring.

At the Phillips Station survey site, just off U.S. Highway 50, lead surveyor Frank Gehrke found about the conditions he expected; water content of the accumulated snowfall there weighed in at 75% of normal. For the five survey sites in the region defined by DWR as the Central Sierra, and for all Sierra survey sites combined, water content was a slightly healthier 85%. While the average represents a slight improvement over last year at this time, when statewide water content clocked in at 76%, DWR officials emphasized that conditions are still below normal. And with the accumulating effects of three prior relatively dry years, some major reservoirs remain at low levels. A sobering example from today’s DWR release:

“Lake Oroville, the principal storage reservoir for the State Water Project (SWP), is at 29 percent of capacity, and 47 percent of average storage for this time of year.”

With several months remaining in the state’s traditional “wet” season, the January survey is perhaps the least reliable indicator of final runoff. According to Gehrke, the season can “go either way from here.”

In a 110-page California Drought Update just released, DWR wrote that:

“Impacts being experienced in the present three-year drought are relatively more severe than those experienced during prior dry conditions – such as the first three years of the 1987-92 drought.”

As such, the agency says it “will move aggressively forward to plan for a potentially dry 2010…”

In February Governor Schwarzenegger declared a drought state of emergency for nine counties that is technically still in effect, though appeals to the federal government for disaster relief have gone unanswered. The Governor has also called on all urban water consumers to cut back their use by 20%.