The New York Times ran a nice piece on the splendor of the waterfalls in Yosemite this year. This year is the wettest year we’ve seen in Yosemite in a long time and it’s evident in the multitude of waterfalls that seem to be pouring forth from every nook and cranny around the Valley. This is definitely the year to visit Yosemite. The amount of water coming over the Valley walls is phenomenal.
NY Times: “It poured again on Sunday in the Yosemite Valley, but people were smiling in their ponchos and galoshes. It has been that kind of spring here: dreadful weather and delighted visitors.
Like many lakes and rivers and waterfalls in Yosemite National Park, Mirror Lake is fed by melting snow, much more of it this year than usual.
With extraordinarily heavy snowfall in the higher elevations, and lots of rain elsewhere, the rivers and waterfalls in the Sierra Nevada are gushing. Hikers must hopscotch around muddy puddles, and much of the park remains closed because of impassible roads, but the Yosemite water show is at its best in years.
‘There are places we’ve stood, where you can look around and see six waterfalls at once,’ said David Cosio of Watsonville, Calif., getting soaked from head to toe near Yosemite Falls with his wife, Linda, and three young sons. ‘We’ve been here before in May, but nothing like this.’
Dan Gudgel, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford, Calif., said the unusually wet winter and spring had snapped a six-year dry spell in the Sierra Nevada. Though the dryness was not as severe as in the drought-stricken Northwest and Southwest, the annual precipitation over the period was about 80 percent of the average.
So far this year, Mr. Gudgel said, the Sierra snowpack is about 180 percent of the average, and the snow keeps falling. More than a foot was forecast for parts of the Sierra in the next few days, and some hikers this weekend to Nevada Fall, a popular destination about 2,000 feet above the valley floor, found enough snow from past storms for snowball fights.
‘The Sierra has been extremely dry, so this is a welcome respite,’ Mr. Gudgel said. ‘I can’t underscore that enough.’”