On California’s dismal snowpack, from the Chron:

The water content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack is at its lowest level in nearly 20 years — less than 40 percent of usual for this time of year, state water officials say.

The size of the snowpack — the source for most of the state’s drinking water — has already prompted calls for immediate conservation. And orders to curtail use of water could become mandatory this summer or next year if 2008 is also dry.

Usually the biggest accumulation of snow occurs around April 1. But this year the snowpack didn’t grow after the first week in March.

Elissa Lynn, senior meteorologist at the California Department of Water Resources, called the 2007 snowfall “pretty dismal.”

(Hat tip Belshaw.)