Surveyors: No return to dry conditions of'07

LAKE TAHOE

WE ALL KNOW it's been wet this winter. But has it been wet enough?

As state snow surveyors measured the snowpack at a meadow along Highway 50 in the Sierra Nevada on Thursday, the answer -- for the first time this year -- was yes.

The snowfall season should end above-average -- and that means Californians, warned to brace themselves after an exceptionally dry 2007, almost certainly won't face water shortages this summer.

That's right. No dirty cars. No brown lawns. And no saving the bath water.

"Fears should be put to rest," said snow surveyor Dave Hart of the state Department of Water Resources. "There's no way you could say we're in any kind of drought."

Mostly because of three heavy storms that smothered the high country with snow in January and February, the Sierra snowpack is 118 percent of normal for this date, officials

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