GREENHORN SUMMIT, Calif. (KERO) — Recent storms have kept the U.S. Forest Service busy with rain and snow. While eroded roads make monitoring and maintaining their areas difficult, it also has them looking ahead to wildfire and tourist season.
The snowpack in Alta Sierra is heavy, despite recent warm atmospheric rivers. However, District Ranger Al Watson with the Forest Service said they'll have to keep a close on that snow and how quickly it melts.
"If it melts just because of warm weather, we’re fine," he said. "If it melts because warm rain is coming down on top of it, that’s a problem."
Watson said the heavy snowfall they received amid these storms benefited them by keeping debris left from the French Fire from flooding lower areas. The problem now is if that snow melts quickly due to warm rain, it would bring even more flooding and debris down the mountain to areas below. This was partly the case with earlier flooding.
“The water had come across and then it just basically eroded all the asphalt," Watson said, referring to a part of Highway 155 that is closed due to erosion. "It’s not very strong so if you take off underneath it it can break off pretty easily."
Forest Service officials are working with the county and Caltrans to address the flooding and damaged infrastructure that has Highway 155 closed, while also monitoring the potential for future atmospheric rivers. Watson said if there's not too much future rain, the snow will just absorb it. But if it’s significant amount of rain and it’s really warm, eventually it will melt everything.
"That would be the worst case scenario,” he said.
Watson, however, isn't too worried that we'll see a worst case scenario. Forecasts currently show, while it's not impossible, it's unlikely we'll have another heavy atmospheric river anytime soon. Even if a small one hits, Watson said the snow will hold.
“So snow, especially here in the Southern Sierras, is a bit dryer than other parts of the country, it has has an amazing ability to absorb quite a bit of that rain,” he said.
This coming in hand, especially in parts of the mountain scorched by the French Fire, which spanned an area of 3,000 feet to 7,000 feet.
“Parts completely devoid of vegetation because of how hot the fire was, those can be danger zones because it means that soil is not being held by anything, so it can become mobile," Watson said. "One of things we do is we map that out after a fire so that we know not only what could happen in that general area, but a thing that happens often in Lake Isabella is what can happen below that area."
The damage to roads could also hurt forest service officials ability to respond to future wildfires, which is why they're actively working with Caltrans and the county to get these areas repaired.
“There will be fires in the summer, and when we start talking about ignitions, what used to be that we could just drive to we can no longer get to," Watson said. "So we’re tracking those so that if we have a fire we at least know how we're going to respond to that.”
Watson also said this amount of rain and snow may seem abnormal in recent times, given the longstanding drought in the state, but in fact it's more the status quo for the mountain.
“This is normal type of weather for the Southern Sierras, it’s normal to have snow, the landscape loves this type of environment," he said.
