Residents Embrace Rain And Snow, But 'Miracle March' Unlikely
PLACERVILLE (CBS13) - Everyone had to ust off their umbrellas and raincoats throughout the valley and mountains as rain and snow arrived on Monday in what is projected to be the wettest week of the season.
Most residents CBS13 spoke to embraced the rain.
"It's great!" one woman said. "We're gonna have it till Sunday. It's awesome."
"I think it's fantastic to get this type of weather," said another. "We need it. It's been way too long."
Now, people in Placerville are hoping for a "miracle March" - a wet month to help make up for the dry winter.
But the numbers this year are staggering. In the northern Sierra, precipitation is at 51 percent of average compared to 122 percent last year. In runoff, this year it's at 36 percent. Last year was 95 percent of average. And the snow pack is at 38 percent of average, 80 percent points below last year.
This week's storm is better late than never. But the Department of Water Resources says it will take a near miracle to catch up. The state is 19 inches of water below average, and March only usually gets about 6 or 7 inches of rain.
In the Sierra, chain workers were happy to be doing just that - working.
"The storms have been coming in at night and by the time trafic starts they're over, so we're really looking forward to this daytime storm," Paul Sherwood said Tuesday afternoon as he worked along Interstate 80 in Blue Canyon.
Last winter's stretch of storms made it easy for chain installers to make a huge profit. This year they've been lucky to make any money at all:
"A lot of this year we've been making just barely gas money on some of our trips up," Sherwood said. "Normally we make under a hundred bucks a lot of the time we come."
Caltrans has geared up for what it expects to be a busy week clearing the Sierra highways.
"It's making driving conditions really difficult, but again I think it's welcome at the same time," traveler Bob Sweeney said.
