From the “weather is not climate” department: All of the western states have snowpacks that are currently 110 to over 180 percent above normal with the exception of southern Colorado. This is unusual for most of the western states to be so far ahead on snowpack all at the same time rather than from one or two states.
And, according to the Squaw Valley Snow Tracker:
Squaw Valley has just reached over 700″ of total snow accumulation– something that has never happened in Squaw Valley’s recorded history.
Squaw Valley opened in 1949.
And in the context shown above, here’s a pertinent reminder of alarmism past:
“…there is no greater truth than global warming, with its threat of a shrinking snowpack…”
That is from this article in the San Francisco Chronicle in October of 2006.
(10-27-2006) 04:00 PDT Norden, Nevada County — For the ski industry, both in California and rest of the nation, there is no greater truth than global warming, with its threat of a shrinking snowpack and the point that Yogi Berra once made so succinctly: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
…
If nothing is done to curb emissions, greenhouse gas emissions could raise Sierra temperatures another 5 or 6 degrees by the end of the 21st century, according to some projections. The snowpack could be reduced by 89 percent.
Sources:
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/support/water/westwide/snowpack/wy2011/snow1105.gif
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/ms.pl
h/t to reader “MM”
UPDATE: Reader Kelly Morris brings this snow water equivalent map to our attention:
Uh oh, do you think that the CU Sea Level Research Group are considering a global snowpack adjustment or GSA to go along with their GIA ??
Interesting that there is so little mention of the potential albedo effect from all this snow cooling things further.
Shoulda seen the downpour leaving Denver at 4 this afternoon… oof. Hard to do 80 with standing water on the road.
Breck set a record, too, by 15″ (519″ for the SEASON, still snowing.) I’m pissed, of course, because my wife won’t camp in the snow.
Mark
Thanks for the ray of sunshine, Larry. Monument Hill may be fun tomorrow morning.
Mark
I read an article last week that stated Lake Powell could be filled with this year’s snowmelt, but will come 20 to 30 feet short because recent agreements require that the Colorado River’s Upper Basin surplus water be shared with the Lower Basin. Estimates at that time (May 5) said that Lake Powell could be releasing water to Lake Mead through the Fall of this year.
And still, it rains in Salt Lake City with snow in the mountains (shooting for 300% of normal snowpack.)
On the subject of rapidly filling lakes, I include an excerpt from an email I wrote a couple of years back:
==============================
Interestingly, the fossil remains of mammoths have been found under the
meadows at the top of the Wasatch Plateau in Central Utah, which rises
to almost 10,000 ft.. This would indicate that those meadows were
accessible during the summers of the last ice age. Additionally, there
is no evidence of glaciers in Utah on mountains under 10,000 ft, and no
evidence of snow fields on mountains under 9,500 ft.. This leads me to
believe that it would have not been much cooler and wetter than it is
now. I do not know how much difference the Great Basin pleistocene
lakes would have made, but they ought to have had a significant
influence, once they were established. I include this excerpt from
:
“Surprisingly, the watershed feeding Lake Lahontan is not thought to
have been significantly wetter during its highstand than it is
currently. Rather, its desiccation is thought to be mostly due to
increase in the evaporation rate as the climate warmed.[citation needed]
Recent computer simulations (using the DSSAM Model[4] and other
techniques) indicate that if precipitation and evaporation rates within
the watershed were maintained at their historical yearly maximum and
minimum, respectively and if diversions of the Truckee River ceased, the
Ice Age extent of Lake Lahontan could return.”
Again, I don’t think that the climate was necessarily significantly
different then than now, it was just a marginal increase in
precipitation and cloud cover, and probably a moderation of the seasons,
i.e. short cold Winter, short hot Summer and a wet Spring and Fall. In
other words, 4 seasons instead of the usual ~6 months of winter and ~4
months of Summer with short transitional seasons in between.
==============================
I trust Bangerter’s Folly is being prepped for use, or I should look for some property on the benches.
Travis,
A) yes, we are aware of history.
B) sorry, but not so in Colorado. All predictions were/are for average snowfall based on history.
C) we’re also not talking “well above average.” Record setting is what actually happened.
Mark
Sorry, the link disappeared. It is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lahontan
Those snow survey numbers are relative to the “normal” snowpack for the date of the survey and for that particular drainage.
That is usually measured in “water content” of the snow, not depth.
In the Colorado front range they have both automated systems that report snowfall in real time, and periodic human surveys where they snow shoe in to pre-designated survey locations, take an aluminum tube and pull a core of snow from the snow pack and then weigh that core. That is then converted to “water equivalent” for the snow pack at that survey location.
That number is then compared to historical records for that survey location and date to see how the water content compares to the “normal”. The sources I have seen do not specifically state if the “normal” is an arithmetic average of the snow water content for each date and location or some other statistical measure.
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/factpub/ah169/ah169p05.htm
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/snotel/SNOTEL-brochure.pdf
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/factpub/wsf_primer.html
Larry
People should already understand when one says “above/below normal snowpack” it is to mean “above/below average snowpack.” I don’t think anybody would be confused as to mean anything else. Hardly moot to even go there.
So…based on the comments so far, CAGW will cause the snow to be so deep in Oregon that this little redheaded elf will be up to her tiples in snow in the middle of July. I’ll be like that Subaru commercial. All you’ll see is the faint glow of my graying red hair just under the snow drift, motoring on.
I see some potential issues with those graphics; they appear (unless I’m reading them wrong) to show no snowpack in Arizona’s high country. That’s just not true; I saw snow yesterday, quite a bit of it and old pack, on north-facing slopes above 7500 feet. In fact, it’s snowing right now at my house, at 7000 feet. I also had snowpack on my property from early December until about a month ago, the longest I’ve ever seen it last. We had some of the coldest days on record too (well below zero many times, unusual for here).
I’m not complaining, not at all; this is usually fire season, so getting snow and rain at this time of year is great!
Mark T,
That only goes to reinforce something you already undoubtedly know: Colorado is extraordinary! So far as I can tell, Colorado is alone in the “record breaking” category. The rest of the West is as I said: “well above average.” Looks like you guys got the perfect storm.
We got some of the purple snow too. From my kitchen window, at elev. 2500′, we look out at 8000′ peaks slathered in white taffy, with the latest storms fresh snow stuck to trees down to 5000′. You can even see it in the Sacramento Valley far south of Red Bluff, all that gleaming white snowcap. It is truly impressive, and it’s the 3rd week in May already.
Weather is not climate! Unless it suits your argument, I guess, judging by the majority of posts above. Vail broke a record for snowfall this season (524″, ended 4/24), but last year had one of the lowest snowfall seasons, not even breaking 300″. The difference is La Nina vs. El Nino, as Travis pointed out.
Warmer water evaporates faster, warmer atmosphere holds more water. These are facts. We are seeing more extreme weather events, and the percentage of North American precipitation that is falling in extreme one-day events is rising. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/indicators/pdfs/CI-summary.pdf
These are predicted in the GLOBAL warming models. Some places will get wetter, some warmer, and some may even cool as weather patterns change. Just because the western-side of our continent is having a cold, snowy winter changes nothing on a global scale, it is exactly the type of climate change that should be expected. One record snowpack is a weather event, not climate, but it IS another anomaly in a long list of increasing weather extremes.
tele-mon says: May 19, 2011 at 1:45 am
Weather is not climate! Unless it suits your argument, I guess, judging by the majority of posts above. Vail broke a record for snowfall this season (524″, ended 4/24), but last year had one of the lowest snowfall seasons, not even breaking 300″. The difference is La Nina vs. El Nino, as Travis pointed out.
Exactly, which has to do with the track the storms take, not the capacity of warm vs. cold air. Besides, La Nina is cold not warm, so your explanation isn’t relevant.
Swings and roundabouts.
Here in Europe we had an incredibly cold early winter, but actually spring came early to the UK and March was incredibly warm and April was pretty dry.
We could do with a bit of your rainstorms over here as farmers are already saying that many crop yields will be down due to lack of early season rainfall.
You lot seem to have a choice as to whether storms go from the Gulf of Mexico straight north or track up the East Coast. If they track up the east coast, we seem to get rain here in the UK. But if they go straight north, quite often we stay dry.
It’s by no means an exact correlation, but I think people will realise in the next ten years that all the oscillations from mean are inter-related and what’s ‘bad’ for one geography will be ‘good’ for another.
Compare Western Australia and NSW. Compare UK and Ukraine. North African rain and UK drought.
There’s linkages………
Tele-mon, your arguments are in opposition to one another and fight like Elk in rutting season. Try again. Record snow pack (be it extreme on either end, or this year, last year, or 10 years ago) is either part of anthropogenic global climate warming, or it is weather related to La Nina/El Nino. Start with a reasonable, supported premise and stick to it.
If there is one thing that makes me cringe when reading comments, it is lack of debate skill. Now if you tried to be tongue in cheek, my criticism is full of holes, but you appeared to be serious.
tele-mon says: May 19, 2011 at 1:45 am
[…]
Warmer water evaporates faster, warmer atmosphere holds more water.
Since it is plausible that a warmer atmosphere holds more water, what does this say about the atmosphere? http://i38.tinypic.com/30bedtg.jpg
Since, “These are predicted in the GLOBAL warming models.” , reality correlation doesn’t happen much for the models does it.
Almost every time I looked at the US precip radar for the last couple months, it seemed there was a blob of precip around Salt Lake City & the mountains just to the east. I figured they had to have a huge snowpack in Park City, Alta, Snowbird, etc. And they do.
Moderate Republican – but don’t you see? Weather is climate, and now we’ve done too much! We’ve not only reversed all our previous Global Warming trends, but we’ve overshot and are now starting to race towards the bottom of the opposite side! Global Cooling! Can’t you see all the climate change? How many scientists do we need on WUWT to form a consensus that will ever satisfy you?
I shudder to think about how frigidly cold the entire planet will go if we don’t do something now to stop the positive-feedback loop too little CO2 will cause! Polar bears running rampant across the Nebraska plains! Small children in classrooms, randomly exploding! A looming penguinpocalypse!
Why, you’re nothing but some sort of foolish Global Cooling Denier, aren’t you?
That.
Now that’s cheerleading.
What the posters are doing on this thread is entirely different.
@TrueNorthist says:
Viner was half right about one thing, when he said in the prognostication you reference that snow would cause chaos in 20 years time because “we will be unprepared for it”. Viner said that in 2000 and the chaos occurred in 2009.
@Moderate Republican says:
May 18, 2011 at 2:34 pm
“If it wasn’t so sad, …”
MR, I never met a moderate republican who would begin a sentence “if it wasn’t so sad”.
That utterance indicates a sensibility from the other side of the aisle.
Yes, freaky late snow and a very long winter around Lake Tahoe. Good news is- I skied 3 powder days this week and the lake level is already very high. It’s bad for the July 4th river rafters because there will already be enough flow down stream that the dam on Lake Tahoe won’t be allowed to open and make the Truckee River fun for tourists.
@ur momisugly Pamela, my point is that La Nina changes storm tracks, and almost always causes increased snowfall in northern Colorado and the Rockies, just as El Nino caused drier winters. What is being observed is an increase in extreme weather events, and records are falling with more frequency than what should be expected.
@ur momisuglySteve, the facts that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, and warmer water evaporates faster, are taught in high school physics. While La Nina does coorelate with colder ocean surface temperatures in the southern and eastern pacific, it also coorelates with warmer ocean temperatures in the northern and western pacific, where many of our storms begin. The models predict more extreme weather events, which is what we are seeing. Miskolczi does have an interesting theory though, which you’ve opened my eyes to!
tele-mon says: May 19, 2011 at 5:39 pm
@Steve, the facts that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, and warmer water evaporates faster, are taught in high school physics.
So what does decreased water in the atmosphere mean, as per my graph?
http://i38.tinypic.com/30bedtg.jpg
While La Nina does coorelate with colder ocean surface temperatures in the southern and eastern pacific, it also coorelates with warmer ocean temperatures in the northern and western pacific, where many of our storms begin. The Pacific SST anomalies from Alaska to mid-Mexico are below average. Our storms track down western Canada and Alaska between the west side of the Rockies to just off the coast. None of our weather originates in the Western Pacific.
Miskolczi does have an interesting theory though, which you’ve opened my eyes to! Never mentioned him, don’t know what you’re referring to.