Snow surveyors in the Sierra high country might not need their snowshoes for the early January measurements.

There's just not much snow to measure up there. A storm might change that by next week in Northern California, but it's not looking good on this end of the mountain range.

A quick search through the website of the state Department of Water Resources told me something I already knew. In the Sierra, there hasn't been a December like this in the last decade, probably much longer.

Compare this year's stats so far with the same time period in 2007, which was the beginning of the last drought. The snowpack was 61% of average four years ago in late December. It's 24% right now. Ouch.

Back in time, December 1986 was very dry as well, state officials said, but the state's remote sensing network was not in place at that time. So it's difficult to make comparisons.

The dry time now is tempered by the above average reservoir storage after the big winter last year, especially in Northern California. That may help west-side farmers who get water from the north.

But many east-side farmers rely on the San Joaquin River, which has an undersized Millerton Lake. Millerton needs a steady flow of river water to keep up with irrigation demands in summer. If snowfall in the mountains above the San Joaquin doesn't improve a lot, there could be a problem for east-siders.