Storm 22 inbound.
Following
 a remarkable winter in which back-to-back “atmospheric rivers” pummeled
 the West Coast, California’s snowpack levels have climbed to an 
all-time high, according to state meteorologists.
The state’s average snow-water equivalent — the amount of water contained in a snowpack — soared to 236 percent of seasonal norms on Thursday, surpassing a 1982-1983 record, the California Department of Water Resources reported.
While
 water content in the Northern California snowpack was only 191 percent 
of seasonal norms, Central and Southern measurements respectively 
reached 234 percent and 297 percent, the agency noted.
This feat was the result of an unusually wet winter, in which 17 atmospheric rivers
 barreled into California and 31 total swept across the West Coast at 
large, according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
“We have atmospheric rivers to thank for all this recent rain,” the institute, based at University of California San Diego, relayed on Twitter.
Atmospheric
 rivers are “long, concentrated regions in the atmosphere that transport
 moist air from the tropics to higher latitudes” — producing heavy winds, rainfall and snow, per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The
 most recent such storm occurred this past week, showering the region 
with rain and snow after months of wet weather — and more is on the way 
this weekend.
Although this latest deluge was not as dramatic as 
previous storms, University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist
 Daniel Swain described the event as “remarkable for one thing.”
“It added even more snow water equivalent to
 the already record-breaking, essentially 300 percent of average for the
 seasonal peaks, southern Sierra snowpack,” Swain said during virtual 
“office hours” on Friday.
“This peak keeps getting higher and higher, and I think that it’s probably getting close to the annual maximum,” he continued.
While that peak may be approaching, the storm series has not entirely wrapped up yet.
“There
 is one more interesting and very cold system to get through next week, 
although it doesn’t look like it’s going to produce very much 
precipitation or wind,” Swain said.
The National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center forecasted 
“heavy mountain snow and lower elevation rain” along the West Coast, from Friday night through Sunday.
This
 latest influx, according to the forecast, will likely add “more snow to
 the already anomalous snowpack throughout the West.”
Swain 
emphasized that this event will probably not yield huge quantities of 
snow, but that it will bring “additional snow nonetheless.”
Once 
that system departs, however, Swain said that this “might be the 
beginning of the end, in terms of California’s very active season this 
year.”
“We’ve got about another five or six days of active cold 
weather and then things might change pretty dramatically towards warmer 
and less active conditions,” he added.
The rain and snow might 
soon stop falling, but Swain warned that “all of that water is going to 
have to come downhill sooner rather than later.”
He stressed that 
during other similarly wet winters, major flooding has impacted 
California’s central valleys, which are among the top agricultural 
producers nationwide.
Floods already inundating the region could 
“affect agriculture for much of the rest of the year” — raising the risk
 of plant fungal infections, damage to levees or plant drownings, 
according to Swain.