State surveyors will travel up the Sierra Nevada mountains to measure state’s snowpack

State surveyors will travel up the Sierra Nevada to take their monthly measurements of the snowpack after a mainly dry and warm February.

The Department of Water Resources will conduct the survey Tuesday in Echo Summit in the Central Sierra, which includes Lake Tahoe.

Last month’s water content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack measured 130 percent of normal for that time of year.

But a warm February has people in drought-stricken California concerned the heat could be melting the above-average snowpack.

California’s snowpack supplies about a third of the water needed by state residents, agriculture and industry as it melts in the late spring and summer.

Water managers say they’re focused on the April 1 snowpack, when it’s historically at its deepest.

They say the snowpack needs be 150 percent of normal, signaling an easing drought.