That was the overarching message disseminated Wednesday by officials at the California Department of Water Resources who released snowpack reading data taken both manually and electronically. The manual snow survey taken by DWR at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada revealed a snow water equivalent (SWE) of 43.4 inches, up from February’s 28 inches and January’s 6 inches. The March 1 average at Phillips is 24.3 inches.

Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, conducted the survey at Phillips today.

“It’s not the record, the record being 56.4 (inches), but still a pretty phenomenal snowpack….,” Gehrke said in a written statement. “January and February came in with some really quite phenomenal atmospheric river storms, many of which were cold enough to really boost the snowpack.”

The snow water equivalent is the depth of water that theoretically would result if the entire snowpack melted instantaneously. The measurement is a key factor in evaluating snowpack’s ability to supply run-off in the spring and early summer which accounts for about 30% of California’s water needs.

Electronic readings taken today from 98 stations scattered throughout the Sierra Nevada indicate that statewide, the snowpack holds 45.5 inches of SWE, or 185% of the March 1 average (24.6 inches). On January 1, before a series of January storms, the SWE of the statewide snowpack was 6.5 inches, just 64% of the New Year’s Day average. On Feb. 1, the statewide SWE was 30.5 inches, 174% of average for that date.

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