Study: Sierra Nevada snowpack at lowest level in 500 years

The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which after melting provides California with about a third of its water and replenishes the state's reservoirs, is estimated to be at its lowest level in more than 500 years.

While conducting research on the connection between the snowpack and the drought that has ravaged the state for the past four years, scientists looked at tree ring studies and information from the 108 measuring stations throughout the Sierra Nevadas, the Los Angeles Times reports. They found that the April 1 snow water equivalent was just 5 percent of the average since monitoring started in the 1930s, and wrote about their research in the journal Nature Climate Change. "We were expecting that 2015 would be extreme, but not like this," said senior study author Valerie Trouet, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona.

Although it's believed that a strong El Niño will bring rain to the West Coast, due to higher temperatures, it may not affect the snowpack. "What we know about snow and how it varies from year to year is that there are two important climatic factors that play a role," Trouet said. "One of them is the amount of precipitation that falls and the other is the temperature at the time that precipitation falls. With higher temperatures, your precipitation is going to fall as rain."

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