Snowpack in Sierra Nevada reaches record levels
Until December 2022, California's reservoirs remained below capacity. However, although there were storms in December, the above-average temperatures resulted in heavy rainfall rather than the usual snowfall, which contributed to improve the hydrological situation.
In January 2023, steady snowfall in the Sierra Nevada region led to above-average snow accumulations , with some areas reaching up to 250% of their typical snowpack levels.
This image, acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellites on 21 January 2023, shows the snow extent in the area.
The Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite , which is composed of two twin satellites, Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B, is equipped with the OLCI (Ocean Land Colour Instrument) instrument which provides multispectral data in 21 different spectral bands with a daily revisit time. Using the OLCI spectral measurements it becomes possible to design specific algorithms to extract important snow properties, with a spatial resolution of 300m.
