Historic: California’s Snowpack Is Gone

News.yahoo.com reports: This movie San Andreas opened Friday, depicting the destruction of San Francisco and Los Angeles as mega-earthquakes rip apart California. The same day, a real-life catastrophe quietly unfolded high in the Sierra Nevada mountain range that runs parallel to the San Andreas Fault: The drought-stricken state’s snowpack disappeared. The California Department of Water Resources reported Friday that mountain snowpack across the state was 0 percent of normal for May 29. That means that even before summer begins, there will essentially be no more of the crucial mountain snowmelt that California relies on to replenish the streams, rivers, and reservoirs that supply water to cities and farms. Sure, there are still patches of snow here and there around the high Sierras. But the “snow water equivalent”—the volume of water that would be produced by melting a depth of snow—is 0 percent, according to measurements taken at 98 stations by the water resources department...