State surveyors in the Sierra Nevada delivered some welcome news on Wednesday amid California’s worst drought in more than a century: The snowpack is well above average for this time of year.

In an anxiously watched rite of winter, state Department of Water Resources surveyor Frank Gehrke weighed a tube of snow at Echo Summit and found it held 16.3 inches of water, about 136 percent of the historical average for the site. To get to the site, he trudged through snow more than 4.5 feet deep — about 1.5 feet deeper than average.

Water officials, however, stressed that while the measurements were far better than last December’s paltry 4 inches, California still has a long way to go to recover from its punishing drought, which is now three months into its fifth consecutive year.

The encouraging omen comes as El Niño, a weather phenomenon caused by warming Pacific Ocean water along the equator, is expected to deliver a parade of storms to California in early January. It’s already being blamed for weird weather elsewhere in the U.S: flooding in the Midwest, blizzards in New Mexico and tornadoes in Texas.

“If we believe the forecasts, then El Niño is supposed to kick in as we move through the rest of the winter,” Gehrke, 68, the don of Sierra snow metrics, said in a statement. “That will be critical when it comes to looking at reservoir storage.”

California’s accumulated water deficit is equivalent to two years’ worth of precipitation in many places, and there’s a statistical “snow deficit” that is tens of feet deep in many of the state’s snowier spots, according to Daniel Swain of Stanford University’s Department of Environmental Earth System Science.

The state’s two largest reservoirs, at Shasta and Oroville lakes, are filled to less than one-third of capacity; historically, they’re usually about half full by now.

The Sierra snowpack, dubbed California’s “frozen reservoir,” is what gets us through our long, dry summers and autumns as melting snow fills lakes for gradual release. It traditionally makes up about a third of California’s water supply.

Wednesday’s manual measurement at the 6,800-feet granite ridge called Phillips Station near Lake Tahoe, one of dozens that will be measured during the next 10 days, supports the findings of a much larger array of electronic sensors across the Sierra, which report an average snowpack of 10.2 inches, 105 percent of average.

Wednesday’s news was a far cry from last winter, when snow was virtually absent even at the highest elevations well into February.

“Business is double what it was,” crowed tow truck dispatcher Sierra Boothby of Milne Towing Services in Truckee. “We’re doing winch-outs for cars stuck in ditches. People didn’t have traction because they didn’t get their chains on when they should have. Or their chains are wrapped around their axles.”

In Watsonville, fields full of Brussels sprouts are so wet that they haven’t needed irrigation since November — a stark contrast with the past few years, when watering was essential through December, said farmer Steve Bontadelli. “And they’re sweeter, due to the cold,” he added.

Creeks are flowing and stock ponds are beginning to fill on the East Livermore rangelands of Karen and Darrell Sweet, who raise Angus cows and calves. “Staggered rainfall keeps the grass growing for cattle now … building toward what we hope will be a normal grass year,” said Karen Sweet.

The wheat fields of Sonoma County hay and grain grower Norm Yenni are already rich with newly germinated plants. “We are doing very well right now,” he said. “The rain gets the crops going, so they reach full maturity and we have the maximum season possible.”

At Sierra ski resorts, “everyone is so happy to be getting back to normal,” said Michael Reitzell of the Petaluma-based California Ski Industry Association. “There’s a tremendous air of excitement in the ski and snowboarder community.”

Already, an avalanche has claimed the life of a hiker in the John Muir Wilderness Area near Mount Whitney. UCLA physics graduate student Michael Meyers, 25, was found beneath snow in a 60-foot slide after a November storm. This month, two skiers at Mammoth Mountain survived an 800-foot avalanche.

In the rugged, remote mountains of the upper reaches of California, two straight weeks of significant rainfall have turned the once-dry Eel River into a formidable force. Coast Guard helicopters recently came to the rescue of two hunters, whose truck was inundated by flooding. One man required hospitalization for hypothermia.

“The rivers are really healthy, full of water and full of steelhead trout,” said Kenny Priest, a Eureka-based fishing guide and reporter.

Flash flooding wreaked havoc on Death Valley National Park, dumping more rain in one October day than the region typically gets in an entire year and badly damaging Scotty’s Castle, a popular landmark.

And it’s just the beginning: According to the calendar, winter started only nine days ago — and “meteorological winter” tends to lag behind that.

While there are no formal criteria that must be met to officially end the drought, the state looks for full storage in major reservoirs and above-normal runoff, said Steve Nemeth of the Department of Water Resources.

“Another three or four months of surveys will indicate whether the snowpack’s runoff will be sufficient to replenish California’s reservoirs by this summer,” said department Director Mark Cowin. Four more manual snow surveys are scheduled at Phillips Station over the next four months.

Meanwhile, El Niño is still on target, with California in its crosshairs. Earlier this month, federal scientists reported that the surface temperature of equatorial Pacific waters was 4.21 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the historic average — higher than the record set by the 1997 El Niño, and the highest recorded in any month since 1950, when modern record keeping began.

In anticipation, Reitzell is prepping his ski gear for a trip to the mountains.

“It doesn’t matter where you go,” he said. “It’ll all be fantastic.”

Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 650-492-4098. Follow her at Twitter.com/LisaMKrieger and Facebook.com/Lisa M. Krieger.