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EngagingData OP t1_j5uh2oi wrote

California’s snow pack is essentially another “reservoir” that is able to store water in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Graphing these things together can give a better picture of the state of California’s water and the current conditions of drought. The recent atmospheric rivers have increased storage in reservoirs and snow in California immensely.

Click here to view interactive version that is updated daily.

Converting snowpack water content (measured in inches of water at 120 different snow sensor sites in the Sierras) into a total volume of water was done by correlating snow sensor data with an estimated the volume of the Sierra snow from 2016 journal article (Margulis et al). See link for more info.

Sources and Tools

Snow and reservoir data is downloaded from the California Data Exchange Center website of the California Department of Water Resources using a python script. The data is processed in javascript and visualized here using HTML, CSS and javascript and the open source Plotly javascript graphing library.

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EndlessHalftime t1_j5v2jln wrote

One pice I think you may be missing is that not all of the snowpack is useful. Snowpack in a reservoir’s watershed is basically additional water in the reservoir. But snowpack that does not melt to a reservoir is will just flow into the ocean.

So you’re adding water (damed) with snow (damed and undamed). It’s not something that’s really fair to add together.

Or that’s accounted for in the 2016 paper and I just misunderstood.

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EngagingData OP t1_j5v5sx5 wrote

You are correct that not all snowpack melt water can flow through a reservoir. I guess perhaps my wording is confusing. The snowpack is like another reservoir in that it stores water, but it's not exactly like a reservoir, in that all of that water will be captured.

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40for60 t1_j5viyjm wrote

but how many pools will this fill?

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