[jacket3ree]

I was in our Truckee office last week just before the snowstorm, and drove back over Kit Carson Pass (Hwy 88) and then to the mid-Peninsula through Stockton to avoid Sacramento traffic.  Lots of snow still above 5,000 feet. Fun to watch it melting driving by.

California has a structural water deficit because its water supply system was launched in 1960 when there were 16 million people living here, and upgrades have not kept up with population growth (40 million today).  Winter temperatures conducive to snowpack are so important because that water supply system relies on that "free" storage.

Obviously at some point, you can have more storage capacity than one can reasonably hope to fill. More pertinent to Southern California, Lake Powell is empty and mostly superfluous at this point.  A large part of the reason for this is that the Colorado River Compact was based on assuming one of the wettest periods on record (1920s) was "normal".  Turns out it wasn't. Also, California "borrowed" Arizona's water until Phoenix happened.

Lake Powell

Colorado River Compact - View from Arizona

[jacket3ree]

I was in our Truckee office last week just before the snowstorm, and drove back over Kit Carson Pass (Hwy 88) and then to the mid-Peninsula through Stockton to avoid Sacramento traffic.  Lots of snow still above 5,000 feet. Fun to watch it melting driving by.

California has a structural water deficit because its water supply system was launched in 1960 when there were 16 million people living here, and upgrades have not kept up with population growth (40 million today).  Winter temperatures conducive to snowpack are so important because that water supply system relies on that "free" storage.

Obviously at some point, you can have more storage capacity than one can reasonably hope to fill. More pertinent to Southern California, Lake Powell is empty and mostly superfluous at this point.  A large part of the reason for this is that the Colorado River Compact was based on assuming one of the wettest periods on record (1920s) was "normal".  Turns out it wasn't. Also, California "borrowed" Arizona's water until Phoenix happened.

Lake Powell

Colorado River Compact - View from Arizona