After another mostly dry month, the snowpack has plummeted even further. The third official survey, from the Department of Water Resources, shows it dropped from 90-percent of average, a month ago, to 59-percent on March first, in the Northern Sierra. And DWR hydrologist, Dave Rizzardo, says with one month left of the traditional wet season, and no major storms on the horizon, it’s time to prepare for a third straight year of drought conditions…

click to listen to Dave Rizzardo

And that means even more major impacts for the watersheds, including from the massive wildfires we’ve been having, as fuels dry even more drastically…

click to listen to Dave Rizzardo

Rizzardo says even if a so-called “Miracle March” got the snowpack back to average by the final survey, for April, it would actually need to be around 150-percent of normal to alleviate drought worries.