The snowpack in California’s mountains is off to one of its best starts in 40 years, officials announced Tuesday, offering hope that the drought-stricken state could soon see relief in the spring when the snow melts and flows into reservoirs that provide water for drinking and farming.

Statewide, snowpack is at 174% of the historical average for this year, an impressive amount because of a spate of recent storms. Even more snow is expected later this week and over the weekend, giving officials hope for a wet winter the state so desperately needs.

“While we see a terrific snowpack — and that in and of itself may be an opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief — we are by no means out of the woods when it comes to drought,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources.

Officials from the department measured the snow and its water content in the community of Phillips just west of Lake Tahoe, marking the first snow survey of the winter. The snow there was at a depth of 55.5 inches (140.97 centimeters) — enough to store 17.5 inches (44.45 centimeters) of water. That’s at 177% of the historical average for that station.

The past three years in California have been the driest ever recorded, dating back to 1896. State officials have severely limited water deliveries to farmers while Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has urged residents and businesses to conserve water.

Roughly a third of California’s water supply comes from melting snow in the Northern California mountains. About 75% of California’s rain and snow comes from the watersheds north of Sacramento. But about 80% of the state’s water demand comes from Southern California, where most of the people live.

Tuesday was the third most snow recorded in early January in the past 40 years, behind 1983 and 2011. The same thing happened last year, when a series of large storms in December pushed the state’s snowpack to well above average. But the next three months were the driest ever recorded.

By the time the snow melted in the spring, the soil was so dry that it absorbed most of the water, leaving little to flow into the state’s reservoirs. Many of California’s reservoirs have been at historically low levels since then, prompting severe restrictions for farmers and calls to conserve for residents and businesses.

State officials think that is less likely to happen again this year because it has rained a lot more, meaning the soil is not as dry. Still, state climatologist Michael Anderson says officials have much work to do to better understand and plan for how dry soil can affect the amount of water that flows from melting snow in the mountains.

A New Year’s Eve storm drenched much of the state in heavy rain, causing flooding that killed at least one person and damaged a levee system in Sacramento County. But that storm was warmer, bringing mostly rain instead of snow.

Two more powerful storms are expected to hit the state this week, and these will be much colder. The National Weather Service says the mountains could get up to 5 feet (1.52 meters) of snow between the two storms.

In Southern California, weather forecasters said “all systems go” for a major storm to sweep over the area Wednesday and Thursday, with peak intensity occurring from midnight to noon Thursday.

Strong winds will add to impressive storm dynamics “setting the stage for a massive rainfall event” across south-facing coastal mountains, especially the Santa Ynez range in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, forecasters said.

On Jan. 9, 2018, the community of Montecito on the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains was ravaged by a massive debris flow that killed 23 people when a downpour fell on a fresh wildfire burn scar.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Vermont farmer Brian Kemp is used to seeing the pastures at Mountain Meadows Farm grow slower in the hot, late summer, but this year the grass is at a standstill.

That’s “very nerve-wracking” when you’re grazing 600 to 700 cattle, said Kemp, who manages an organic beef farm in Sudbury. He describes the weather lately as inconsistent and impactful, which he attributes to a changing climate.

“I don’t think there is any normal anymore,” Kemp said.

The impacts of climate change have been felt throughout the Northeastern U.S. with rising sea levels, heavy precipitation and storm surges causing flooding and coastal erosion. But this summer has brought another extreme: a severe drought that is making lawns crispy and has farmers begging for steady rain. The heavy, short rainfall brought by the occasional thunderstorm tends to run off, not soak into the ground.

Water supplies are low or dry, and many communities are restricting nonessential outdoor water use. Fire departments are combatting more brush fires and crops are growing poorly.

Providence, Rhode Island had less than half an inch of rainfall in the third driest July on record, and Boston had six-tenths of an inch in the fourth driest July on record, according to the National Weather Service office in Norton, Massachusetts. Rhode Island’s governor issued a statewide drought advisory Tuesday with recommendations to reduce water use. The north end of the Hoppin Hill Reservoir in Massachusetts is dry, forcing local water restrictions.

Officials in Maine said drought conditions really began there in 2020, with occasional improvements in areas since. In Auburn, Maine, local firefighters helped a dairy farmer fill a water tank for his cows when his well went too low in late July and temperatures hit 90. About 50 dry wells have been reported to the state since 2021, according to the state’s dry well survey.

The continuing trend toward drier summers in the Northeast can certainly be attributed to the impact of climate change, since warmer temperatures lead to greater evaporation and drying of soils, climate scientist Michael Mann said. But, he said, the dry weather can be punctuated by extreme rainfall events since a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture — when conditions are conducive to rainfall, there’s more of it in short bursts.

Mann said there’s evidence shown by his research at Penn State University that climate change is leading to a “stuck jet stream” pattern. That means huge meanders of the jet stream, or air current, get stuck in place, locking in extreme weather events that can alternately be associated with extreme heat and drought in one location and extreme rainfall in another, a pattern that has played out this summer with the heat and drought in the Northeast and extreme flooding in parts of the Midwest, Mann added.

Most of New England is experiencing drought. The U.S. Drought Monitor issued a new map Thursday that shows areas of eastern Massachusetts outside Cape Cod and much of southern and eastern Rhode Island now in extreme, instead of severe, drought.

New England has experienced severe summer droughts before, but experts say it is unusual to have droughts in fairly quick succession since 2016. Massachusetts experienced droughts in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021 and 2022, which is very likely due to climate change, said Vandana Rao, director of water policy in Massachusetts.

“We hope this is maybe one period of peaking of drought and we get back to many more years of normal precipitation,” she said. “But it could just be the beginning of a longer trend.”

Rao and other water experts in New England expect the current drought to last for several more months.

“I think we’re probably going to be in this for a while and it’s going to take a lot,” said Ted Diers, assistant director of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services water division. “What we really are hoping for is a wet fall followed by a very snowy winter to really recharge the aquifers and the groundwater.”

Rhode Island’s principal forest ranger, Ben Arnold, is worried about the drought extending into the fall. That’s when people do more yardwork, burn brush, use fireplaces and spend time in the woods, increasing the risk of forest fires. The fires this summer have been relatively small, but it takes a lot of time and effort to extinguish them because they are burning into the dry ground, Arnold said.

Hay farmer Milan Adams said one of the fields he’s tilling in Exeter, Rhode Island, is powder a foot down. In prior years it rained in the spring. This year, he said, the dryness started in March, and April was so dry he was nervous about his first cut of hay.

“The height of the hay was there, but there was no volume to it. From there, we got a little bit of rain in the beginning of May that kind of shot it up,” he said. “We haven’t seen anything since.”

Farmers are fighting more than the drought — inflation is driving up the cost of everything, from diesel and equipment parts to fertilizer and pesticides, Adams added.

“It’s all through the roof right now,” he said. “This is just throwing salt on a wound.”

The yield and quality of hay is down in Vermont too, which means there won’t be as much for cows in the winter, said Vermont Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts. The state has roughly 600 dairy farms, a $2 billion per year industry. Like Adams, Tebbetts said inflation is driving up prices, which will hurt the farmers who will have to buy feed.

Kemp, the president of the Champlain Valley Farmer Coalition, is thankful to have supplemental feed from last year, but he knows other farmers who don’t have land to put together a reserve and aren’t well-stocked. The coalition is trying to help farmers evolve and learn new practices. They added “climate-smart farming” to their mission statement in the spring.

“Farming is challenging,” Kemp said, “and it’s becoming even more challenging as climate change takes place.”

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