Thursday's survey in the Sierra, near Tahoe, confirmed January and February have been the driest on record for the Golden State.
Right now, the snowpack is only at 57% of average for the season.
Frank Gehrke, chief of snow surveys at the Department of Water Resources said, "The real concern is you start to get into this pattern where -- when you start to stack dry years on top of each other, that's when you run into difficulty."
About 15% of the state's annual precipitation usually falls in March.
The Sierra snowpack provides about one-third of the water used in the state.
