The skies were grey, snow was falling and it was bitterly cold when state snow survey chief Frank Gehrke made his monthly march out to a deep pillow of snow in the Sierra Nevada town of Phillips on Thursday morning.
Nic Enstice, left, and Frank Gehrke right, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program for the Department of Water Resources, check a Sierra snowpack sample on March 30, 2017 near Twin Bridges. (Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
He plodded across the white mounds, plunged his metallic pole into the powder beneath him, pulled it out and made his proclamation: 94 inches deep.
The 2016-17 winter created one of the deepest snowpacks in California’s recorded history and it’s loaded with enough water to keep reservoirs and rivers swollen for months to come.
“For recreation, there’s a lot of pent up demand for spring touring,” Gehrke told reporters and viewers watching on a social media livestream. “Clearly this is going to be a good year for it. People have to be aware that conditions are different and they can’t expect the same conditions they had a couple years ago.”
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