SACRAMENTO, CA - Baby Sammy Nikolayev's parents said their son is on the path to recovery.

Sammy headed to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford on Wednesday. Alex and Anna Nikolayev said their son is gaining weight, and doctors plan to wait as many as six weeks before heart surgery.

Sacramento police officers and Child Protective Services took Sammy into protective custody last week after his parents removed their son from Sutter Memorial to get a second opinion. A judge returned custody to the parents Monday, but he had remained at Sutter Hospital until Wednesday.

"He was so excited driving the road down. He was not crying. He had his bottle, and when we arrived up there, all those nurses were smiling at him. He was smiling, and he was welcomed there," Anna Nikolayev said.

ECHO SUMMIT, Calif. (AP) - California's last snow survey of the season is bad news for the millions of state residents who rely on the snowpack for their water.  

The state Department of Water Resources found the water content in the snowpack on Thursday was 17 percent of normal, an ominous situation for a state that depends on a steady stream of snowmelt to replenish reservoirs throughout the summer.  

In some places, there was no snow at all.  

State officials are projecting they will deliver just 35 percent of the water that has been requested from the 29 agencies that rely on the snowmelt, which supplies more than 25 million Californians.  

This year has been one of the driest rainy seasons on record in some parts of California.