In normal years, snowpack levels are lower and there is spare capacity on transmission lines.
Next year, if snowpack returns to normal levels, there will be plenty of spare transmission capacity.
Already the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, the main water storage for the Delta, is shrinking.
Colorado Avalanche Information Center forecaster Spencer Logan said there have been weak layers in Colorado's snowpack since early January.
Sometimes boarders will leap over a huge rock, then roll and disappear under the snowpack but they always get up.
WSJ: Snowboarder Jeremy Jones's Secret Code of Snow | Creating
Meanwhile, the California Department of Water Resources found the water content in the snowpack was just 17 percent of normal.
Glaciers, ice fields, and snowpack store an immense amount of fresh water and gradually release it to meet year-round needs for irrigation, drinking, sanitation, industrial processing, clean energy, and food production.
FORBES: Should Countries With No Water Be Pushing for Growth?
This leaves the BPA with a whole new set of problems as it grapples with the prospect of excess hydropower resulting from an abnormally abundant snowpack in the region this year.
FORBES: Grid Operators Drop Plan for Rolling Wind-Farm Outages
This year and last year, snowpack is higher than usual, which means somebody is sitting on a hydropower boondoggle and is unwilling to let wind farm operators get in the way.
Usually the water problem is a natural one of scant rainfall or the absence of topographical means of collection and retention, such as mountains for snowpack or lakes and flowing rivers.
Essentially, they isolated a rectangular column from the surrounding snowpack and used a snow saw to start an artificial fracture by cutting through the weak underlying frost layer, then watched what happened.
These changes are making water supply and quality more difficult to obtain, affecting runoff and soil moisture, increasing water temperatures, decreasing snowpack and lake and river ice, threatening fish and aquatic species, and allowing saltwater intrusion and sea level rise.
应用推荐