Wet weather puts snowpack on track

RENO -- A monster storm that pummeled the Sierra and Northern Nevada for three days more than doubled the region's snowpack and greatly eased drought conditions -- provided the tap doesn't run dry between now and late spring, weather experts said Monday.

"Right now we're good. Let's just hope it keeps on coming," said Gary Barbato, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Reno.

The storm that brought waves of heavy snow and rain was among the biggest in the past 50 years, according to the weather service. It dumped up to 11 feet of snow at some of the higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada.

Whether it was enough to end drought conditions remains to be seen, but it certainly helps, said Kelly Redmond, a climatologist with the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno.

"This snow is money in the bank," Redmond said. "I don't know if it's a (drought) buster, but it certainly helps quite a lot."

In the valleys of western Nevada, the Reno area received about 8 inches of snow, while farther south in Carson City, Gardnerville, Minden and other outlying foothill areas, totals easily topped a foot or more. That didn't include heavy rains that fell before temperatures dropped.

Some of the rain totals were records in themselves, Redmond said.

Reno on Friday received 1.91 inches of rain, 25 percent of its annual average of 7.48 inches.

When the calendar changed to 2008, the water equivalent in the Truckee River Basin was 56 percent of normal, Barbato said. As of Monday, it shot up to 96 percent.

In the Tahoe Basin, the snowpack jumped from 49 percent to 108 percent of normal.

But experts said storms, big or little, need to keep coming.

"Otherwise we're going to drop like a rock," and any gains of the past week will quickly be lost," Barbato said.

The immediate long-range forecast is iffy.

"We're kind of in the middle," he said, between predictions on whether the next three months will be wet or dry.

For Nevada and the Sierra, the wettest time of the year is usually mid-March.

"After that it usually peters out in a hurry," Barbato said.

But Redmond said in the past decade or so, spring storms haven't always materialized.

"We've had to coast, in effect, on early winter storms," he said. "It's not necessarily a given that the season will keep up."

The hefty snowpack and moisture levels are in sharp contrast to last year, when the winter was dry and the Sierra snowpack was dismal at best.