Standard tools are no longer capable of measuring the significant Sierra snowpack.

(Screenshot via Veuer)

There's so much snow in the West right now that scientists can't even measure it. Their tools simply don't work.

"We're not even close," hydrologist Jeff Anderson told the Reno Gazette-Journal after sticking a tube Despite the scientists' struggle, the massive amounts of snow spell good news for the drought-strickenregion

On March 1, automated snow measurement systemSNOTELrecorded 212 inches of snow at Slide Mountain. The system found that there was more than 6feet of water in the 17-foot snowpack. The previous March 1 snow record was less than half of that at a little more than 5feet.

The record-smashing snowis a stark change from two years ago when Anderson recalls measuring the worst snowpack on record on in the Sierra Nevada.

Those massive totals aren't limited to Nevada either.

One SNOTEL sensor in the Sierra estimated a snow depth of 20 feet, 240 inches, as of March 2. That same sensor located at Leavitt Lake, California, estimated just under 95 inches of water equivalent in that massive snowpack,weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman said.

Overall, California's snowpack is estimated to be 185 percent of the normal amount for the start of March and

Questions still remain as to what will happen to that massive snowpack once it melts.

senior climate scientists Juliet Christan-Smith said in a letter from the Union of Concerns Scientists about this year's western snow.

“Even in heavy snow years like this one, global warming is the wild card in our water security.”