Streamwatch: Astonishing snowpack numbers portend record runoff A dry 2022 ended abruptly in November with a foot of snow. Despite the continuous precipitation all winter, consistently cold weather kept winter streamflows low. But with record snowpack, 2023 will bring record…
In the Mono Basin, the 2022–2023 season made snowfall history in January—and February—and is poised to set new records again as March snowstorms pile more snow on top of an already-record snowpack. Highway 395 has been closed due to several…
During the 2021 runoff year (April 1, 2021–March 31, 2022), the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP) was allowed to export up to 16,000 acre-feet of stream diversions from the Mono Basin because Mono Lake was above 6380…
Each spring the Mono Lake Committee’s team of modelers and Mono Basin hydrology experts uses the lake level on April 1 together with the Mono Basin snowpack numbers and similar-year and other relevant hydrological statistical data to produce the Mono…
After driving all day, I arrived at the Pumice Palace in Lee Vining just after sunset, and no one was home … in June 1995 … and in September 2021. In 1995, I was starting my summer internship with the…
At the Cain Ranch weather station five miles south of Lee Vining, where precipitation records go back to 1932, the 2020 water year was the third-driest on record. Only 47% of average precipitation, or 4.92 inches, was measured at that…
