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Each winter, California officials trudge up the Sierra Nevada to measure the snowpack, with news cameras watching closely. Last year, there was a thick blanket of white. This year, the blanket had turned to a crunchy brown.
“We would like to have had more snow,” said Grant Davis, the director of the Department of Water Resources, after officials put the official measurement of “snow water” at 0.4 inches. In some areas, the snowpack was as low as 3 percent of normal. Across the Sierras, snowpack is at 24 percent of the historical average.
Roughly one-third of California’s water supply comes from runoff in the Sierras — snowpack measurements are critical to help plan how much water cities and agricultural areas will receive.
Still, Mr. Davis said there was no cause for alarm.
“It’s far too early to draw any conclusions about what kind of season we’ll have this year,” he said. Typically, half of the annual precipitation in the state comes in December, January and February.
It’s easy to gloat about sunny skies to East Coast friends bracing for a “bomb cyclone” blizzard, with officials there declaring emergencies and canceling school. But it was just three years ago when Gov. Jerry Brown stood on a bone-dry patch of land in the Sierras, declared a drought emergency and ordered mandatory cutbacks of water usage across the state.
With reservoirs still full from last year’s downpours, there is little reason to worry that the state will face cutbacks again anytime soon.
Continue reading the main storyStill, “It’s pretty grim,” said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Water Policy Center of the Public Policy Institute of California.
“We use hope as a strategy for rainfall,” he said. “But everyday it doesn’t rain the probability of having a very dry year has really increased.”
In 2012, the dry Sierras did not touch off a panic, he added. Perhaps it should have.
“Could we have looked forward to what we would end up having, we would have panicked,” he said. “There’s no Goldilocks moment here — either there’s a whole lot of snow or very little.”
California Online
(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)
• After a teenage girl called the police Christmas morning, school soccer coach from Sacramento was arrested and charged with felonies related to the trafficking and pimping of minors. [The New York Times]
• A preliminary magnitude 4.5 earthquake shook San Francisco Bay Area residents out of their slumber early Thursday. [Bloomberg]
• The housing industry is working to court “Hispennials” — Hispanic Millennials — who they expect will account for a big surge in home buying. [The Orange County Register]
• The Trump administration is trying to pump more water south through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, despite concerns from some that the fish population is shrinking. [The Sacramento Bee]
• Hair up. As little skin as possible. Professional shoes. How do you dress for interviews about your sexual harassment complaints? A California graduate student explains how and what she learned. [The New York Times]
• The acting director of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Thomas Homan, suggested that politicians in California should be arrested for defying immigration policy. On Wednesday, Mayor Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento was defiant: “They certainly know where to find me.” [The Sacramento Bee]
• The man accused of making a 911 that led to the death of unarmed man shot by a police officer in Wichita, Kan., will not fight extradition to Kansas. [The Los Angeles Times]
• The Wine Country wildfires may have been started by faulty electrical equipment. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. found damaged electrical equipment at or near the four suspected starting points of the fires. [The San Francisco Chronicle]
• How much is getting in shape worth to you? Here’s a trainer in Venice who charges $225 an hour, counts Dwayne Johnson as one of his clients and is a celebrity of sorts himself. [The New York Times]
• More banks are willing to open up accounts for marijuana businesses, according to federal data, even as President Trump is considering a crackdown on marijuana. [Forbes]
• How an 88-year-old Northern California woman (and the mother of 10 children) served as the model for the abuelita in Pixar’s “Coco.” [Remezcla]
And Finally ...
So there’s no blizzard here, but you still want a cup of hot cocoa? You might want to get fries with that.
In-N-Out, the beloved California-based hamburger chain, has long prided itself on simplicity — there’s just a few items (burger, fries, milkshake) on every menu. But now, they’re adding hot cocoa to the mix.
Already, the hot cocoa has drawn widespread attention on social media here, with some extolling the crunchy mini marshmallows that come with the Ghirardelli drink.
“I just found out that IN-N-OUT has HOT COCOA and I am way more excited than any adult has a right to be about hot cocoa,” wrote Daniel Shawn Miller.
It’s not exactly a new item — more like a bit of nostalgia leading the way.
“This is actually the return of hot cocoa,” Lynsi Snyder, the president of the company, said in a statement. “My grandparents, Harry and Esther Snyder, served it for many years beginning in the ‘50s. I’m not sure how it fell off the menu but it’s part of our culture and something special for kids, and I’m happy that we’re bringing it back.”
On rainy days, kids younger than 12 can get a free cup of hot chocolate. Might be enough to make you wish for rain.
California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
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