Conditions for snowboarders at the Northstar at Tahoe Ski Resort are not good. The Truckee resort will close for the season early due to a lack of snow, the result of an early melt.

April 1 is the most important day for evaluating California’s water resources for the year and is considered the end of the rainy season, which runs from Oct. 1 through March 31. The last day of March is also when final snowpack measurements are made in the Sierra.

The bad news this year is that the snow is already almost gone. On average, California’s April 1 snowpack stores around 27 inches of water, equivalent to billions of gallons of water. This year, it is less than 5 inches, and the mountains are largely bare.  

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What we’re seeing is a clear signal of human-caused climate change. California received about its average precipitation this winter; however, only a small fraction was snow. Extraordinarily high temperatures wiped out the snow, either sublimating it off into the atmosphere or turning it into runoff too early in the year to be captured by reservoirs.

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From a water-supply perspective, the state is in OK shape: Major reservoirs are full, ensuring that, this year........

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