Christine Bowman's day began in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. She flew with pilot Brett Hendricks to Statum Meadows. It's a place where Bowman is able to measure the snowpack. But from up above, it didn't look good.
Pilot Brett Hendricks said, "pretty weak for snow so far."
It doesn't look any better on the ground. Last year cabins in the area were buried under 12 feet of snow. This year has been very dry but Bowman still has a job to do.
She's a hydrographer. While on the mountain she has to measure the snow in 10 different spots.
She said, "I have a reading of 18 inches. That's pretty shallow."
She recorded the numbers and then weighed the snow.The numbers will predict how much water will drain into The Kings River from here.
"We have 8 inches of water equivalent at this sample point," Bowman said.
That's not a lot of water. It's just 39 percent of what is usually here this time of year. To make things worse, the numbers are similar all over the state.
Bowman said,"it's normal for us to have dry years and wet years but for a dry year like this, we're going to have issues down the stream."
It could mean problems for irrigation and hydro power generation. Lakes and rivers won't be as deep and that's a problem for recreation. At the end of the day, it's all bad news for the Valley.
TXT 24
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