Snowpack accumulation in 2012 has outpaced last year by an enormous amount, said weather officials. “A quick look at the Sierra or Shasta county mountains shows that locations which had only a few inches of snow cover near  the end of 2011 are currently under several feet of snow,” the National Weather Service in Sacramento posted on its official Facebook page. “Precipitation amounts across portions of the Northern Sierra Nevada are running from 150 to as much as 200 percent of normal for this time of year.” What is responsible for the astronomical amount of precipitation in the region throughout …