The southern Sierra snowpack could cause a kerfuffle if it were an enormous Slurpee machine. By golly, it’s got enough water stored to potentially create more substantial flooding than California’s already experienced. And ain’t that a pickle? Especially when one considers that southern reservoirs are rather petite, and flood control ain’t as fancy as in other parts of the state.

Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, warned of the precarious situation on Tuesday. He said, “Reservoirs in the southern Sierra? They’ve got enough snowpack upstream to fill ’em up multiple times over — that’d be a big ol’ mess!” Meanwhile, the Tulare Lake basin is currently tussling with more floodwater than a kitten with a ball of yarn.

Swain went on, “Y’all ain’t seen nothin’ yet! We’ve still got 98% of that snow yet to melt, and when it does, yeehaw! It’ll turn into runoff that fills our rivers, reservoirs, and just might spread into those floodplains, too!” National Integrated Drought Information System data backs up Swain’s claims – in fact, they say the 2023 snowpack is the “biggest doggone pile of snow seen in 90 years”!

Now, if only that snowpack could thaw at a leisurely pace, like a sunbathing turtle, our reservoirs might be fancy and full throughout summer as folks start hollerin’ for water. But if it melts lickety-split, well, that’ll bring on floods a bit too fast, and we’ll be fresh out of “snowpack reservoir,” as they say, to keep that water stored.

Our beloved state climatologist, Michael Anderson, said, “How this whole hootenanny shakes out is gonna depend on if it gets too hot too fast, or if the sun up and shines too bright on that snow.” Now, everyone’s crossing their fingers and toes that no heat waves or atmospheric river storms are a-comin’. So far, the weather forecast’s givin’ us hope!

Now, officials do have a plan: they’re gonna let loose some water from those reservoirs to make room for the incoming snowmelt. The thing is, though, that’s like trying to wrangle all that water downstream, which could present us with a whole new set of problems. Jeremy Arrich from the California Department of Water Resources stated, “We reckon high river levels’ll be seen and felt for a spell, especially in regions like the San Joaquin Valley and the Tulare Basin. We’ll keep our boots on and be ready to respond if things go sideways.”