According to the state’s first snow survey of 2025, Northern California has much more precipitation than Southern California, and that pattern may persist with climate change.

California Department of Water Resources staff member Andy Reising, Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Unit Manager, leads the first media snow survey of the 2025 season at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada approximately 90 miles east of Sacramento off Highway 50 in El Dorado County,, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (Nick Shockey/California Department of Water Resources via Bay City News)

As of Thursday, there is 24 inches of snow depth in the northern Sierra Nevada, according to the California Department of Water Resources. That amounts to 9 inches of water, or 91% of average, for the Phillips Station site where the survey was done. It was 37% of the April 1 average.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.