Yosemite NP still closed.

[Drew Wiley]

It's the wildflower effect I'm a bit worried about, since I'm eager to get out and see it, but don't want to deal with road closures, or hopelessly muddy goo on dirt roads. All this extra rain would be seem to be beneficial to abundant blooms. But the fact is, that on especially wet years, the grass itself grow for fast and high that it quickly crowds out flowers.
Some of my early season favorites, like redbud and the almond orchard blooms, are probably already past their prime. Locally, we have some splendid yellow mustard pastures at the moment; and it should be an especially good wildflower year out on Pt Reyes later on, in May and June.

I had to have a rather firm discussion this past weekend with some of my outdoorsy friends about scheduling high country backpacking trips. I'm sure there will be more drownings this year than usually due to people trying to ford snowmelt streams too early in the season. Enough died during the drought years when attempting to get in too early - six at just one spot in one month, due to a footbridge washing out the previous year.

The falls in Yosemite will be exceptionally big this year, but no doubt the crowds too, as summer nears. Still, it would take decades in a row of this kind of weather to jump-start the dying cirque glaciers in the Sierra anew. And they've pumped out hundreds of years worth of groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley, which will take a long time to replenish under the best of circumstances.

[John Kasaian]

I just read on MSN that the entire Sierra National Forest is closed to visitors.

[Drew Wiley]

No need to close it; it closed itself! But there is a tremendous area of Sierra NF which lies well below the likely remaining snowline. My own former place was an inholding within that. And of course, the "Sierra Non-Summit" ski resort will want to reopen as quickly as safely enough. I do remember one year when an individual was killed by an avalanche right there on an official ski slope itself. But all the Sierra backcountry would be
suicidal to enter right now, due to the extreme avalanche hazard. My nephew was on ski patrol on the popular long cross-country run between there and Red Peak when he was in high school - quite a chore sometimes getting out people with a broken leg or whatever.

But i remember winters with far more snowy than now, and greater flooding. The record snow depth was about double the present one - around 90 ft for a single season, setting a world record until remote sensing equipment was installed deep in the Alaska range in the 60's or 70's. The weather accountants tend to lop off anything prior to modern instrumentation, making the "official" Sierra record about 40% more snow than now. But all that is relative to mid-elevations, while maximum snowfall is more often around 9,000 ft or higher instead.