Below is yesterday's 24-hour snow melt. Brighter Blue = 1.4" to 2" water equivalent from melt, green line is the Oroville Dam watershed boundary.
1"+ would normally have been a rather heavy melt day a copule of months ago with 70%+ snow cover across the whole watershed, but snow cover is only something like 3% today.
For comparison, here's what it looked like in March. This was for 72 hours, but you can see the snow cover was far greater.
So where did all of the snow cover go? Just 11 days ago the State was saying that they had a contingency plan to use the spillway one more time "If water from snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada fills the reservoir harder and faster than currently expected,"...(link below)
If you look at the snow water density map it shows the Oroville Catchment Basin near empty (white circled area).
Have you been following this? Why has the snow essentially disappeared in the Oroville Catchment Basin yet is dense (30 inches of water equivalent) exactly south on the southern edge of the Basin for a great distance?
Seems odd, in comparison with the news story. What's up?
Noaa map of water equivalent in snowpack. Oroville catchment basin (white circle) is almost nil while 30+ inch levels up and to the southern edge of the basin.???