Newsletter: Woohoo, California! Snowfall was ‘normal’ in the Sierra Nevada

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, April 6, 2024. Let’s look back at the week, er, last few days, of Opinion.

I say days because, as you might have already noticed, we recently made this a twice-a-week newsletter, with Deputy Editorial Page Editor Mariel Garza having sent you the first midweek edition on Wednesday. She focused on the “interspecies showdown” between the barred owl and the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest — or, more specifically, how wildlife managers decided to kill thousands of the former to help the latter. Keeping our focus on the natural world, I’d like to talk about water and mountains.

As The Times’ editorial board noted, California water managers recorded a slightly above-average snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, a welcome sign for the state’s water supply after the winter started out abnormally dry. Truth be told, “abnormally” might not be the best word to use, as drenched-or-dry water cycles have always been typical in California, even without considering climate change. Our history has many examples of a few years of drought followed by an especially wet year that makes up the water deficit; it’s only by averaging these divergent water totals that we arrive at a figure of “normal” for California.

The extensive water infrastructure of dams, reservoirs and aqueducts built in California during the last century reflects this historical reality. But as the editorial board notes, climate change makes our already unpredictable precipitation patterns even less predictable: What might have fallen as snow high in the Sierra before, melting slowly downslope into rivers, streams and aqueducts, will more frequently fall as rain, making storage more challenging. Higher temperatures mean more snow melts and evaporates before the water can work its way into our supply.

So it’s nice to have a water cushion, even a small one, heading into the dry season (and perhaps after that, a dry year or three). The Sierra snowpack was measured at 105% of normal, an oddly comforting taste of “average” as we head for times when we can seldom expect it. It’s like L.A. celebrating “June gloom” when it arrives, as it did last spring and summer, because warming waters off the coast of Southern California mean we can no longer rely on the deep marine layer that acts as a natural air conditioner.

So even if the fog rolls in and the reservoirs fill up, it’s still crucial for us to let our lawns go brown, use efficient appliances, eat less meat and dairy and generally regard water as a scarce resource.

Struggling to get help with college through the FAFSA? Don’t give up. Jaclyn Piñero, who runs a nonprofit for underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students, says families that have always experienced difficulty navigating the federal financial aid system are having even more problems with the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. She encourages students to keep working on their FAFSA forms, complete the California Dream Act application for those eligible, and to seek help that’s readily available.

Israel’s “sharp power” manipulation threatens democratic allies. Sharon Pardo and Yonatan Touval, both scholars based in Israel, note that Israeli leaders’ cries of political manipulation by American politicians don’t always reflect their own actions: “Israel’s foreign policy under [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has adopted more of the much-maligned sharp power tactics typically associated with authoritarian regimes, such as Beijing and Moscow.”

Latinos are getting out of the “other” box on the U.S. census. “Other” is not a race, and for decades half of Latinos who did not identify as one of the rigid boxes on the U.S. census form and therefore marked “other” were reclassified as white. But last week, the White House announced a “check all that apply” ethnicity question, with Latino/Hispanic being an option. Sociologist Julie A. Downing writes, “This is a monumental step forward in advancing data equity, not just for these groups, but for our ability to accurately compare U.S. racial groups more broadly.”

Jack Smith just called out Judge Aileen Cannon in the Trump classified records case. Last month, Cannon ordered Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith to “engage with” the Trump legal team’s bogus representation of the Presidential Records Act in proposing jury instructions. When Cannon issued her order, columnist Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney and deputy attorney general, wrote that the judge “crossed the line into running interference for the former president.” Now, Litman sums up Smith’s response to Cannon as, “I’m not playing.”

Why is California behind Texas and other states in curbing homelessness? Brookings Institution fellows Tracy Hadden Loh and Hanna Love say housing is being built much faster in Texas’ biggest cities than in Los Angeles or San Francisco, though efforts to address this discrepancy are being made but will take years to bear fruit. In the meantime, they write, California officials should provide more temporary options such as safe camping, parking and shelter.

More from this week in opinion

From our columnists

• Robin Abcarian: I wanted to hate what UC Berkeley parents are doing in the name of safety, but I can’t.
• Jackie Calmes: Christine Blasey Ford’s memoir isn’t about Brett Kavanaugh but still suggests a #MeToo reckoning.

From the Op-Ed desk

• One way to save the Colorado River? Give up one hamburger a week.
• Heat pumps cut costs and pollution. So why isn’t it easier to install one in California?

From the editorial board

• Criminal justice reform is alive. Thank conservatives.
• Berkeley’s backtrack on gas ban won’t stop the electrification trend.

Letters to the editor

• Smog probably gave me cancer. Clean-air laws are deeply personal.
• The Israeli strike against Gaza food aid workers sure didn’t look like an accident.
• The LAX “horseshoe” is a cluster. Try these solutions before the People Mover opens.