The snow was deep enough in Hope Valley for cross-country skiing on Saturday morning.
Jay Aldrich | Special to The R-C
For a few days at least, the snowpack is around 100 percent for the Carson, Walker and Truckee river basins.
Both the Carson and Walker basins are at 99 percent, while the Truckee, which includes Lake Tahoe, hit 102 percent after two atmospheric rivers arrived in the first half of February.
On Sunday morning, the National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory for the Tahoe Basin as a band of snow slid south bringing the possibility of 1-4 inches of snow to the basin and rain to Carson Valley.
While that won’t add much to the snowpack, every day when the weather brings precipitation instead of sun will help preserve what’s on the mountain.
The Valentine’s Day storm saw the snow-water equivalent at Ebbetts Pass, at the top of the East Fork of the Carson River go from 16 inches to 21.4, or 86 percent of median. That’s locked up in 69 inches of snow as of midnight.
Carson Pass at the top of the West Fork was at 94 percent of median on Sunday morning with similar amounts of actual snow, including a depth of 68 inches and 21.4 inches of snow water equivalent.
There are a few spots where the snow-water equivalent have climbed above the median like Poison Flat at 7,730 feet with 14.2 inches of snow water equivalent, running 113 percent of median on Sunday.
Horse Meadow at 8,580 feet is running 110 percent of median with 15.4 inches of snow water equivalent and 59 inches of snow on the ground.
There’s 5 feet of snow in Heavenly Valley this morning, containing 17.4 inches of snow water equivalent, or 91 percent of average.
But lower down, at the Spratt Creek telemetry site above Markleeville there’s only 5 inches of snow on the ground, containing 1.1 inches of moisture, making for 29 percent of median. On Feb. 16, 2024, the location had three times that at 3.3 inches.
The lack of lower elevation snowpack means that conditions are fragile for the coming irrigation season, which starts on April 1.
Forecasters say that a high pressure system is expected to build into Northern California and Nevada late next week and into the weekend.
“This will keep dry conditions in place with light winds and valley inversions limiting the warming trend initially, but then highs could make a run for 60 degrees for Western Nevada valleys with lower 50s for Sierra communities by next Saturday,” said National Weather Service Meteorologist Justin Collins.