From The Declining Spring Snowcover Department
Experts tell us that spring snowcover has seen rapid declines in the Northern Hemisphere over the last 20 years. As of today, western US snowpack averaged by state is 137 percent of normal.
According to USDA Snotel measurements, Arizona is 446% of normal. California is 131% of normal. New Mexico is 184% of normal. Nevada is 126% of normal. Montana is 104% of normal.
Lake Powell water levels have risen four feet in the last month and are 56 feet higher than they were on this date in 2005.
http://lakepowell.water-data.com/graphingengine.php?graphing=1+back_days=150
Salt Lake City just had its latest spring snow on record. Mammoth is expecting a big Memorial Day snow storm.
The Obama administration (42% approval) forecasts heat and drought for the western US. Let’s see how they are doing!
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/wrcc/WaterTDeptWRCC.png
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/wrcc/WaterPNormWRCC.png
Apparently Arnie’s efforts to stop global warming have been successful.
Schwarzenegger has emerged as a national leader on global warming, the one whose name most frequently comes up in foreign capitals when international cooperation on reducing carbon emissions is discussed. Al Gore might have a Nobel Prize, but Schwarzenegger heads a state that, if it were a country, would rank among the 10 biggest economies in the world. Given the Bush administration’s unwillingness to seriously address the problem, Schwarzenegger’s initiatives to mandate hard emissions targets and set up carbon-trading schemes with other states and Canadian provinces make him this country’s most forward-thinking governor, and its greenest Republican.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Some twit will come out and say this: This is thin first year snow and will melt rapidly. Old snow has mostly disappeared from the mountains.
However, I follow snow pack regularly, which is measured as water equivalent, the only way to measure snow that has meaningful information. Snow cover means nothing in terms of stream flow and water availability. This year Oregon’s water equivalent is adequate for the summer irrigation season and a bit better than last year (by basin, it ranges from 70’s to 130’s % of average water equivalent), so we’re good.
The first two “Key message” points are not true. The average US temperature has not risen 2F in the last 50 years and precipitation has not increased 5%. The Reanalysis data shows a slight decline for both.http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl. The rest is biased conjecture.
Mr Watts,
I thought cherry picking was a sport practiced by the other team?
Your first graph appears to show that there has been more accumulated snow pack in the South West and less in the North West. There are a few too many averages of averages of a difficult to measure substance going on to believe any of the actual numbers. From the UHI guy (great work) – I expect better of you.
Oh my heavens. I just read the linked article at Discovery and they are doing exactly what I just said was stupid. Measuring snow cover by pixels. They, in essence, are following weather systems and saying it is climate change. What idiots. These people have never fought over irrigation water. Water equivalent is the only thing that matters. Ever plowed water snow versus sugar snow? I have. Water content is everything. Not depth, and not coverage. Anything else related to snow is just academic silliness.
There cannot be that much snow in Arizona in May anyway!
On these maps, there is only a tiny white speck, which was not there last year.
Scroll down.
http://www.climate4you.com/SnowCover.htm#Recent USA-Canada snow cover
Keep in mind that the snow season has not ended yet in the Rockies. In the Denver Metro area, we are still about 2 weeks from our latest historical snow in the metro area, and snow will still be falling in the high country for another month.
According to the Colorado Basin River Forecast center http://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/ significant melt has not started yet in the Colorado Basin except for a small area in north central Colorado were there are areas reporting bank full flows, all others are reporting normal stream flows.
It will be several weeks before we have a good idea what the actual snow melt run off conditions will be this year. In wet years peak flows frequently occur in the early part of June. Then we also have additional precipitation in early summer if we have good upflow from the gulf and heavy stationary thunderstorms develop as happened in the Big Thompson flood on July 31, 1976, when a stationary thunderstorm parked over the Big Thompson drainage and dropped up to 12 inches of rain in 4 hours.
The June 1965 flood in Metro Denver occurred on June 16, 1965, when heavy spring rains fell on rain soaked ground saturated by days of continuous rain, and river drainages full of snow run off melt water.
Our water year is just getting started. Actual peak reservoir levels will not be known for some time yet for this year.
Larry
Just a note: Reservoirs should not be at capacity right now if snowpack water equivalent is taken into account in above average areas. That is so melt does not cause down stream flooding. Lowering levels now gives the reservoirs the capacity to do what they were often built to do, hold and manage snow melt.
The minimum snow pack occurs just prior to it increasing at the end of summer. Dave Springer says: May 26, 2010 at 2:55 am Storage has fallen by 1.4 million acre feet so far in 2010. Lake Powell has yet to see any major inflow this year as the run off from snow pack is just beginning, and will peak in 6 weeks or so.
WRT April being the warmest ever, in Carbondale, Colorado, the nearest town to me, the highs for April never reached average, and in fact the average high for April 2010 was 7° below the historical average. We expect frost until June 1st-ish, but still have solid freezing, 25°F yesterday, every few days still. This is the second year of late warming. It can be labeled weather of course, but the anomalies for a warming climate tend to be above average not below.
“RR Kampen says:
May 26, 2010 at 2:40 am
“Experts tell us that spring snowcover has seen rapid declines in the Northern Hemisphere over the last 20 years. As of today, western US snowpack averaged by state is 137 percent of normal.”
How large a fraction of the Northern Hemisphere comprises the western US?
Why suggest this fraction is 100%?
May 2010 in Holland was very cool. What does it suggest about hemispheric or global temperature? Nothing at all, of course. This cool May is just weather. So is snowcover this spring in that part of the US. Northern hemisphere snowcover has dropped far below normal, no?
Of course, everyone on this forum knows all this. So what is the motive for all this silliness? Could it be you are all trying to be first laughed at, then totally forgotten in order to give Al Gore en Kyoto uncriticisable freeway?”
Dear Mr Kampen,
Possibly also worth for you to mention that the current cold period started here, in the Netherlands, in November 2009 (coinciding with a certain climate conference) and has been caused by a persistent high pressure system over the North West Atlantic affecting the whole of North West Europe (UK, France, Germany, NL, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden) which is a little unusual, or different to “usual” (whatever that is, e.g. the last thirty years)??. To dismiss observations actually concerning 6 months and hundreds of thousands of sq km. as “weather and not climate” doesnt appear to make much sense because, as I am sure you will agree, climate is in any case ultimately just a derived function of weather measurements, at a different time scale.
The problem with the “current situation” is always how to distinguish noise from long term signal. However, its doesnt seem to me in the current situation, seeing the limitations revealed with various “official” data sources, very wise to have a closed mind concerning new developments. Indeed it is very instructive to see how the (subjective) perception adds up to the “official” record (or not..)
So, despite your comments concerning “silliness”, Mr Kampen, my thanks to this blog, where, laughed at or not by you, these developments are discussed, no doubt with a lot of hot air and mistakes, but ultimately with some increase of individual knowledge for those open to it….
DM
The reference period for the source data at http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/snotelanom/snotelbasin is 1971-2000.
Here is the latest drought map: http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html
Here are the streamflow forecasts: http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/support/water/westwide/streamflow/wy2010/strm1005.gif
That’s not snow – it’s the first fruits of the Stateswide Albedo Project (SAP) which is reflecting that nasty sunlight back into space where it belongs. Supporters of Ursus Bogus have dressed up in white polar-bear costumes and are lying down in protest at the failure of an otherwise caring and progressive government to tax fossil fuels to extinction and create millions of green jobs for illegal immigrants who really need them.
Anthony is undoubtedly pretty busy and can be excused for using a “reasonable” way of showing a variance in warming indicators…..much like our Pythonesque friends like to say:
“Now we’ve taken this theory one stage further. If we increase the size of the penguin until it is the same height as the man and then compare the relative brain sizes, we now find that the penguin’s brain is still smaller. But, and this is the point, it is larger than it was.”
Dave Springer says:
May 26, 2010 at 2:55 am
“Lake Powell” and “good shape” in the same sentence? There were people who never expected it to fill. Of course, several of them never wanted it created.
Interesting site. In addition to pool level, inflow and outflow are important. At last report (May 24th) sees 23704 in, 9957 out. A week before saw 16067. Units cubic feet/sec instead of something scientific. The average inflow for today is 40024 cfs, and the temperature 16°F warmer.
I suspect the data reflects slow melting more than poor snowpack, or at least I suspect inferring snowpack from temperature and inflow requires more than a single day’s data.
Here in Fresno, it is expected to reach a whopping 74 degrees today. Yesterday, it was 68. Tomorrow, again, 68. And it rained last night, which mean there was snow in the higher elevations of our neighboring Sierra Nevada mountains. For those who have never lived in this area, this is weather you would expect to see in early March. Normally at this time in late May, we will not have seen any rain for over a month, s cloud appearing in the sky is a rare event, and the temps are usually in the upper 80’s to mid 90’s. Having a 100 degree day in late May is not unheard of.
If this is Global Warming, then… More Please!
The SW is doing fine for snow as the article reports. In the WA however only the Olympics are well packed at over 200%, while Eastern WA is running a deficit with snow pack below 70% over most of the east side of the state (same with ID).
ftp://ftp.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/data/water/wcs/gis/maps/wa_swepctnormal_update.pdf
Most irrigated Ag is in Eastern WA, so there are still a few worries, but snow pack was down around 50% in the Cascades as late as March and has recovered quite a bit since then. A good deal of the irrigated Ag water comes from the Cascades, so all is not bad since they have snow pack of about 80-90% where the irrigation projects get their water.
Schwarzenegger has emerged as a national leader on global warming
Business continue to leave California because of California’s business unfriendly regulations. This is why many want Meg Witman to become Governor. She has run businesses successfully unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger. Californians can’t wait until he is out. I live in California so I know this firsthand. And unfortunately I voted for Arnold! 🙁
BTW, where did global warming go? Maybe it fell in Arnolds couch cushions. It’s been a cold Spring here.
Larus says on May 26, 2010 at 12:24 am said:
Honestly, how hard is it to grasp the concept of cycles and that parts of a sine wave look like a downward or upward trend until you have enough data?
I have been watching Lake Shasta in Northern California data. To my surprise it has gained about 100 feet in elevation and is now only a foot and a half from full. This lake is enormous, 4.5 million acre feet. A good reason to celebrate, its not all gloom and doom out there.
http://www.shastalake.com/shastalake/
vigilantfish said
“May 26, 2010 at 4:22 am
Heatwave in Toronto. It feels as if this part of the world is disconnected from larger global trends this year. Sigh… 🙁
——-
It seems to me that some urgent research is needed into the climatic conditions of Toronto.
Pleae arrange research funding, accommodation, vehicle and send air ticket soonest. I am also willing to carry out research into other congenial areas of the world. 🙂
Tonyb
What’s interesting in California is that even though snowpack is 137% of normal, and much of the water for Southern California comes from the Sierra Nevada winter snowpack via the California Aqueduct system, the only thing you *ever* hear in the media lately in So.Cal is “We’re in a drought, please conserve water.” They’ve purchased billboards all over So.Cal, you see commercials, the local municipalities are even implementing new water restrictions. All this despite INCREASED precipitation statewide.
Out in Western Washington there was much gnashing of teeth in Jan and Feb twenty ten when temps were about 10+ f above average (not “normal”, there is no “normal”). Many municipalities went into stage 1 water restrictions in anticipation of a catastrophe. Then in March, April and even into May, the mountain snow came a-fallin’. As far as I know they haven’t lifted those restrictions…
Joe, of course you mean “affected”, not “effected”.