California’s terrible snowpack signals the start of fire season

from Rachel BeckerCalMatters

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On Wednesday, California recorded its second-worst snowpack on record, a potentially troubling sign for the fire season.

It’s a troubling end to a winter that saw unusually dry conditions briefly wipe California’s drought map in January, for for the first time in a quarter of a century.

Although there is still rain it was almost averagemuch of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then record heat in March melted most of the remaining snow. However, the main reservoirs of the state are overflowing above historical averages and are flirting with capacity, and some snow, rain and thunderstorms are reducing last month’s heat wave.

But now experts are warning that the case of California’s missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting a token April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station, south of Lake Tahoe, found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to applaud you for calling probably one of the fastest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people can actually use an umbrella,” joked Carla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We get a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrological drought? The answer is I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing the season at an alarming 18% of the national average and an even more appalling 6% of the northern highlands average which feed the major reservoirs of California.

Oonly the extreme drought of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measured in only 5% of the average on April 1, when the snow is historically deepest.

“I think everybody expects it’s going to be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“With no snowpack and an early spring, it just means there’s a lot more time for something like this to happen.”

“It’s pretty weird up here”

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the great fire in Kaldor in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, Fire Chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It’s pretty weird out here right now. It really seems like the conditions are more June than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning on their lawn sprinklers.”

Without more rainfall, an early spring could complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said Tahoe Basin fire departments may begin mechanically clearing fuels from forested areas earlier than usual.

“It means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners should start bracing their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for Lake Valley Fire Protection, which protects unincorporated communities on the south shore of the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Goldberg urges residents to search their yards for flammable materials, create a safe space and contact local fire departments with questions. The hazards are widespread – from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles – even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“Over the years, I wouldn’t even think about raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard is completely cleared of snow and has been for several weeks.”

“Fire in a Haystack”

Battalion Chief David Acuña, a Cal Fire spokesman, said the fire season is determined by more than a year of snowpack.

Climate change is turning California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California is recent average to abundant water years have nurtured what Acuña called “huge crops of vegetation and shrubs.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there are layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña was not ready to make specific predictions about the fires to come.

But John Abatsoglu, a professor of climatology at the University of California, Merced, said this year’s temperatures and snowpack conditions offer a glimpse of California in the final decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to raise global temperatures.

How this year’s fires play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions are combined. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatsoglu said, “is another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.