With climate change, Berkeley snow lab’s mission remains critical

For someone who admits to "childlike excitement” at the prospect of a snowstorm, Andrew Schwartz has the perfect job. He's the new manager of the University of California, Berkeley's Central Sierra Snow Laboratory (CSSL), the only continuously manned snow research outpost in the Western U.S. He arrived there last April, and so far, he's loving it. His first season in the 75-year-old U.S. Forest Service building - both a lab and a home for him, his wife and two dogs - in Soda Springs, California, saw the second highest October snowfall ever in the Sierra Nevada and the highest snowfall for any December in recorded history. That was good news at the onset of winter, Schwartz said, but the so-called "whiplash weather” that has become normal in California - unusually dry months followed by abnormally wet months - makes forecasting the season's snowpack highly uncertain. A lightly dusted January was followed by a nearly dry February, which ended with a 16-inch dump of new snow three weeks ago. Less than 10 inches of snow has fallen since, and predictions are for a drier than normal spring - again. A new Berkeley News series will examine how the campus community is confronting the climate crisis.