Guest Post by Verity Jones
While the MSM is all hot under the collar about the Killer heat wave in the mid-East US, not a mention about the massive snow accumulation in the Western USA this year. It’s not just a few roads being late to open due to the excessive snow clearance effort (WUWT: here and here), the snowpack is way above average this year. Good news for water supply; bad news for riverside communities.
Just take a look at the extent of this – the Snotel map from 5th June below shows percent of normal snow-water equivalent. The measurements are mostly off the scale, which if you’ll note only goes up to 140% of normal. From the lack of blue and green dots, I’m taking it that the red ones are errors.
- Map from: NRCS Google Earth SNOTEL Data Layer
From mid-May there has been concern in many areas over the amount of snow and the potential for flooding, but instead of melting rapidly the snowpack has persisted, and even continued to accumulate. As of 9th June almost all states listed here (with the exception of Alaska, Arizona and New Mexico, which have much less than normal) are showing vast excesses of snow for the time of year. For example Utah:
And a different format depiction for Wyoming:
Below is yet another way of looking at it – here for the Upper Colorado (link: http://snowpack.water-data.com/uppercolorado/index.php), specifically the feed into Lake Powell. Now this really made me sit up. The levels were ticking along a bit above average until just after mid-April, then they began to rise, and rise, and rise. This says two possible things are happening – either more snow has been falling, and/or temperatures are just not rising enough to melt what is there. Either scenario says ‘cold’.
On 5th June:
“April 15th is the date of maximum snowpack and basinwide snowpack is currently 66.6% of the April 15th average
Snowpack is 277.9% of the June 5th average.”
Of course you just know that when the melt really does get going you just know that all that snow and the ensuing flooding will be blamed on CAGW.
This got me thinking – at what rate does snow melt? I mean we’ve got some truly gargantuan snow drifts in places – how likely is it that significant proportions of them will remain in places that have not retained snow in summer for years?
The last slide in this EPA presentation gives ranges for melt rate with a degree-day factor. The range seems to be 0.07-0.150 inches per day per degree F. These are estimates for a variety of conditions ranging from partially forested/shaded areas to open sun on a prairie. Although some are quite specific, they are still estimates. Now if we take the example of a 22ft drift in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park (Road opens way late due to massive snow) and look up appropriate degree day figures for the region used with this range of melt rate, perhaps we can get an idea of the potential for residual snow pack at the end of the summer.
Using the U. S. degree-day mapping calculator (Coop, L. B. 2010. . Version 4.0. Oregon State University Integrated Plant Protection Center Web Site Publication E.10-04-1: http://uspest.org/cgi-bin/usmapmaker.pl), the following map is for Colorado, calculated between now and the end of September for a 32F base:
Key 
For the higher altitudes we have 1500-2600 degree days before we might expect reasonable additions if not accumulations of snow again, but, still using guestimates for the actual melt rate it seemed sensible to work with a range:
Starting at 264 inches (22 ft) 8th June, the table shows the estimated snow depth remaining on 30th September depending on the assumed melt rate and number of degree days (above 32F). [Update: The table above was produced on the assumption that the melt rates referred to depth of snow. Having covered a lot more background reading on this today I think I should have read the melt rate as “inches SWE/day*F”. Current rates of melting from the NOAA summary table are 0.1-1.6 inches SWE/day. For a 22ft starting snowpack (estimated as 150 inches SWE) my back-of-envelope calculation suggests melt rates would need to be sustained at >1.25 inches SWE/day to remove this depth of snow by the end of September.]
This suggests to me that at higher altitudes there’ll be significant snow ‘left behind’ this year. Those white patches on the distant mountains will be a welcome return for many – cameras at the ready folks!
More than that though, what effect will this have on local/regional temperatures? There would be increased albedo in the mountains where the snow is retained, and potential for cold air drainage as well as depressed river temperatures from prolonged snowmelt over the summer. These effects might be small, and it is, after all, just one unusual year.
Although this is “just weather”, what if we start to have more ‘higher than average’ years now that the PDO has flipped to a cold phase? High pass road opening dates are well documented in Washington State and, having plotted these for the Chinook Pass and North Cascades Highway, I had previously speculated Is the PDO correlated to road openings?
With many analyses suggesting cooler times are on the way, this year may be exceptional in recent experience, but how many “just one year”s would it take for us to notice the effects?
(Updated from post http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/where-snows-dont-melt/)
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Verity,
Great post – Thanks a Bunch! Most useful data and links!
Here’s a related link…. the ‘down side’ of long winters and huge snowpacks….
Harsh winter strands antelope at Montana reservoir
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/11/us-antelope-stranded-idUSTRE75A1AR20110611?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
Just be glad you don’t have a big volcano eruption (yet) honking ash on top of all the snow. That could get quite the mess.
Really glad you mentioned the Upper Colorado River Basin in your report. Some people still seemed confused about where all the moisture comes from that falls as snow over this region, and what conditions it takes to evaporate all that moisture. Even more seemed confused about the true picture of La Nina, assuming somehow that this “cooling” of the equatorial Pacific means the whole Pacific is somehow cooling, when nothing could be further from the truth, as in even less know is the fact that La Nina is the period in the ENSO cycle that the Pacific is actually absorbing more net heat, and El Nina is the time of discharge of that heat. But back to the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) and snow pack. Recent studies are showing a strong correlation between WARMER waters in a specific region of the Pacific and a higher snow pack in the UCRB,and this region has nothing to do with the ENSO cycle or the PDO. To quote the extract from this report, it says:
“A “non-ENSO/non-PDO” Pacific Ocean SST region between 34°N–24°S and 150°E–160°W was identified as being the primary driver of UCRB snowpack.”
This is very important. Note, it is NOT the cooler waters immediately off the west coast of the U.S. associated with La NIna that have anything to do with snow pack in the UCRB, but rather a WARMER area of the Pacific,much further away, where the warm waters can evaporate more moisture that is then carried across the Pacific to fall on the UCRB as snow in the winter.
Well, of course, this past winter, wouldn’t you know it…we had a very warm area of the Pacific, exactly in the region identified in this study…and look what we got in the UCRB. The full report on the association between this warm region of the Pacific and snow pack in the UCRB can be found here:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009WR008053.shtml
This study was only done for the UCRB, but since the storm tracks that come into the UCRB often come in from the Pacific NW, it would not surprise me if there would be an association between snowfall in other areas of the western U.S. and this warm region of the Pacific.
Mammoth Mountain will be open until July 4 for skiing/snowbarding, they would be open longer if the USFS let them… They currently have a base of 8-16ft and the total snowfall for the year is so far 669in. That makes this the highest snowfall year on record for them (since 1969-70), with the next highest being 578 in 2005-06. So that got me thinking and I looked up the snowfall history for Mammoth since 1969, which can be done here http://tinyurl.com/3ucye3v
(scroll down and click on History in the middle of the screen, then scroll to the bottom of that and click on “Previous Years”)
The top 4 snowiest years on record (40 year record), with snowfalls all over 550+ inches, occured between 2004 and 2011…with 5 of the top 10 in that time period…!
What was that quote about kids wont know what snow is again??
Climate change is warmer air is more moisture is more clouds is less direct sunlight is more snow surviving summer.?
pat says:
June 11, 2011 at 9:27 am
The earlier thread on declining snow pack blamed AGW. This heavy snow pack is blamed on AGW, AGW can do anything but good.
_____
Leaving aside the issue of AGW for a moment, please see my post about the WARMER region of the Pacific ocean and increased snow pack levels in the Upper Colorado River Basin. It takes greater evaporation to get greater snowfall, and greater evaporation can only come from warmer, not cooler waters. See this report:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009WR008053.shtml
Ed Caryl says:
June 11, 2011 at 8:19 am
It looks like the glaciers will return to Glacier National Park.
_____
You are mistaking weather for climate. Glaciers come and go with changes in climate, not a season or two of heavy snowfall. I suggest you do some research on glacial growth and realized the big difference between heavy snowfall in once season, and the long-term summer cooling trend necessary to create glaciers.
Verity,
Thanks for the reply. In reviewing your linked EPA doc, they do include a latitude dependent radiation factor in their equations, which would address my original concern. Given the latitude & elevation of the original photo, the range of your initial calculation could probably be narrowed from the calculation based on degree days alone.
Roger Sowell says on June 11, 2011 at 9:50 am
When Lake Powell’s level is decreasing it is a sign of global
warmingclimate change and that we are all doomed.When Lake Powell’s level is increasing it is a sign of global
warmingclimate change and that we are all doomed.When Lake Powell’s level is constant it is a sign of global
warmingclimate change and that we are all doomed.I think that about sums it up.
“I remember when they were doing atmospheric testing in the 50′s and of course anything remotely occurring in “unusual” weather was conveniently blamed on the Nukes. People were happy with that. It is never going to change, only the target of the cause.”
The longer you observe the weather, the more likely you are to see extreme events. For example, if you observe the weather for 1 year, you are not likely to see a 1 in 100 year storm. If you observe the weather for 100 years, you are more likely to observe such a storm.
Thus, the longer you keep records, the more it will look like the weather is becoming more extreme, and thus the climate is changing. Of course the climate isn’t changing. What is changing is the length of time you keep records. What we are seeing is statistical nonsense dressed up as “Climate Science”.
You are right Jeff, but that abundant snowfall is caused by warmer,not cooler ocean tempertures, as this report demonstrates:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009WR008053.shtml
But more to the point, glacial growth as studied in tens of thousands of years of ice cores shows that years of heavy snowfall are not associated with glacial advance, and if fact, there is a negative correlation between the two…i.e. warmer periods see heavier snowfall but less glacial growth. Why would this be? Simple: it takes warmer ocean waters to get more precip that leads to to heavier snowfall in winter. But in summer, the warmer water is associated with warmer summer temps that melt all the snow (and then some), and you get no glacial growth. Bottom line: the idea that heavy winter snows are associated with glaical growth is simply wrong. Average winter snows with cooler summers are more indicative of the conditions of glacial expansion over the longer term.
The Oregon snow pack is clearly not related to an increase warm moist air. Mt Bachelor closed Memorial Day with a 160 inch base. Sure, we had record snows, but they didn’t melt in the spring. Our May average was about four degrees below the historical monthly average, and on closing weekend on the mountain we had 24 degrees with 14 inches of powder. The mountain receives occasional January rain, That didn’t happen this year, and this spring really stands out as a cold one.
@ur momisugly R Gates
Obviously, for net accumulation , snowfall has to be > snowmelt each year, resulting in glaciers. The question is do you achieve this: through more ppt, cooler melt season temps or some combination of both. IMHO, we have seen some of both in the western US this year & I think this is consistent with observed geologic data that shows the western US was considerably wetter on the Pleistocene than now, thus this winter may offer a small insight into ice age processes in the western US.
In sighting glacial core studies over 1000s of yrs, I would assume you are looking at continental glaciers as that is the most likely location to find datasets of that length. The data sited of less snow & colder temps isn’t a surprise to me for that setting in that current arctic areas as essentially frozen deserts. However, all my comments were only meant to apply to alpine glacial systems of the western US. Maybe I should have made that more clear in my initial post.
@ur momisugly R Gates
BTW, forgot to mention, I do like your cited study with a warm N PAC source region. I think it is reasonably well supported. However, that warm source region is associated with la Nina conditions & la ninas are stronger & more common with a cold pdo & a cold pdo is strongly associated with cooler global temps. So, cooler global temps & this warm N Pac source region aren’t inconsistent.
What this really illustrates is how meaningless a global mean temp is as it applies to your local or regional weather. is a perfect case in point.
R. Gates says:
June 11, 2011 at 11:28 am
“Bottom line: the idea that heavy winter snows are associated with glaical growth is simply wrong. Average winter snows with cooler summers are more indicative of the conditions of glacial expansion over the longer term.”
As usual, you do not realize that your position implies that heavy winter snows are never accompanied by cool summers. Warmista just make up stuff. You just made up the universal generalization “For all periods of winter and summer, heavy snowfall in winter is followed by a summer warm enough to melt the snow.” There is no way you could know that the claim is true.
Hey R. Gates,
Thanks for pointing out an example of the effects of Local (not global) Warming!
And, what is it that is causing the “WARMER region of the Pacific ocean”?
Is it anthropogenic OCO or is it cyclical variation in the circulation patterns of the Pacific Ocean?
R. Gates,
Stop muddying the waters, please. It’s been very cold and wet spring in Colorado and other Western states.
To avoid any doubt, I repeat: COLD, not only wet.
Do some “research” yourself next time, with the thermometer on your veranda.
While other threads were about snow fall, this thread is focused on snow MELTING.
Note again the caption below the SWE graph:
* On 5th June: “April 15th is the date of maximum snowpack and basinwide snowpack is currently 66.6% of the April 15th average
and now the web site (click on the SWE graph) it says –
* On 11th June: “April 15th is the date of maximum snowpack and basinwide snowpack is currently 44.42% of the April 15th average”
The snow is melting, just not as fast as “normal”. From the 5th to the 11th, the snowpack went from 66% of max to 44% of max. So it is going down, but going down more slowly than in a normal year. The rest of the article describes estimates and factors which affect melting.
With that in mind, I am thinking that cooler waters off coast in the Pacific (a la cool PDO) probably does affect the melt rate more than the “warm spot” farther out in the Pacific which may have brought the snow in the first place per R. Gates: June 11, 2011 at 10:08 am.
Doug says:
June 11, 2011 at 11:48 am
The Oregon snow pack is clearly not related to an increase warm moist air. Mt Bachelor closed Memorial Day with a 160 inch base. Sure, we had record snows, but they didn’t melt in the spring. Our May average was about four degrees below the historical monthly average, and on closing weekend on the mountain we had 24 degrees with 14 inches of powder. The mountain receives occasional January rain, That didn’t happen this year, and this spring really stands out as a cold one.
____
Once more, the source of the warm pacific water that evaporates and forms into storms that follow the jet stream and bring snows to Oregon is not off the coast of Oregon. The moisture bearing weather patterns for the western U.S. are dictated by exchanges between the ocean and atmosphere thousands of miles away from Oregon. But make no mistake…it is warmer waters, not cooler, far out in the Pacific that will ultimately decide how much moisture falls in Oregon. The local temperatures in Oregon will dictate if moisture comes in as rain or snow in any given region of the state, but the storms that dump that moisture were spawned by ocean-atmosphere exchanges far out in the Pacific, away from the Oregon cost..
R. Gates says:
June 11, 2011 at 1:15 pm
The waters that fed the La Nina storms over the PNW were BELOW normal SST’s. They were below normal for quite some time, and this warmer is wetter stuff is nothing more than a Warmist contrivance.
It is also the same snowpack as 1982-83 fed by an El Nino.
Proof: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
Your theory is wrong, R. Gates, and fails to hold it’s water.
The big snowpack is more a function of the failure of the Sun to warm the Tropics (as seen in UAH data) and drive the Jet Streams back to where they normally resisde, and a like failure to move the stuck weather patterns West to East.
Has nothing at all to do with Antropogenic anything.
there is enough snow above one of our largest reservoirs to fill it twice here in southeastern Idaho they are dumping so much water out of it to prep for the melt that there are some bridges that might get washed out.
Just yesterday I cancelled my five day rental of a forest service cabin in the Snowy Range,between Laramie and Saratoga, scheduled for 21 – 25 June. I reserved the cabin in January this year. Today there is still over six foot of snow at the cabin. This much snow this late is just unheard of. I was planning fishing poles not ski poles. Not a surprise the North Platte river is flooding.
Alexander Feht says:
June 11, 2011 at 12:57 pm
R. Gates,
Stop muddying the waters, please. It’s been very cold and wet spring in Colorado and other Western states.
To avoid any doubt, I repeat: COLD, not only wet.
Do some “research” yourself next time, with the thermometer on your veranda.
______
Nice expression when talking about moisture, snow fall, snow melt: “stop muddying the waters…” Very clever!
Anyway, the point of all my previous discussion is that you can’t really look at local conditions to understand where the moisture comes from the creates all this lovely snow accumulation that seems to have gotten some folks all excited about. You really need to look far out in the Pacific (not right off the coast) to see the origin of the moisture that has nicely fallen on the mountains of the west. Different regions of the Pacific are associated with different regions of the Western U.S. to a very high level of correlation (as per this study: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009WR008053.shtml)
Now then, it is going to be generally true that cooler waters in the regions of the Pacific Ocean associated with the generation of the storms that actually bring the moisture to any particular region of the western U.S. will mean less moisture is evaporated and warmer waters will mean more moisture.
In Colorado, the east slope this past winter was generally quite while the mountains (at least the northern and central mountains) got a way above average snow. This has to do with the storm track generally not allowing low pressure systems to set up in the southern part of the state, which will tend to bring in moisture to the eastern part of the state.
Finally, it seems few here are really talking about why the western US. was generally cold this spring, nor where that flow of cold air comes from. Certainly, it isn’t coming from the deserts of the southwest. In checking the past three months we can easily see that the entire west, Pacific NW, and up into Canada is cooler than normal. See this chart:
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/.Global/.Atm_Temp/Persistence.html
But what you’ll also notice on this chart, is that this is in fact one of the few regions of the the planet that is cooler than normal over the past 3 months, with the other significant region being Northern Australia. The Western U.S. has had a nearly constant flow of cooler air from the sub-arctic region pushing south, while during this same time, and not surprisingly, the Arctic has been seeing normal to higher than normal temps in general, but especially over the Asian side. But what is most clear by looking at the above persistence chart is that the entire N. Hemisphere has not been cool and that the the Western U.S. being cool is actually the exception rather than the rule. Combine these cooler than normal temps with the warm region of the Pacific that generates much of the moisture for areas of the west like the Upper Colorado River Basin…and well, you”re probably going to get more snow.
But right now, I can tell you, because I live here, that the biggest concern is potential flooding and the dangers of heavy stream flows from all the snow that is melting. And as this live camera from high in the Rockies shows, yes, there is some snow left, but it is melting, and we’ve got a long hot summer ahead:
http://tiny.cc/yrj6h
In closing, reports of a pending glacial advance due to a season of heavy snow in the western U.S. are greatly exaggerated…
Cold here in NE Oregon. Early May in near mid June . Roses and Lilacs are way behind.
Above average snow pack glad it’s not too warm as the flooding would be interesting.
Reminds me of the early:” ICEEE AGGGEE! Were gonna die fer sure! “era….
Jeff L says:
June 11, 2011 at 12:43 pm
@ur momisugly R Gates
BTW, forgot to mention, I do like your cited study with a warm N PAC source region. I think it is reasonably well supported. However, that warm source region is associated with la Nina conditions & la ninas are stronger & more common with a cold pdo & a cold pdo is strongly associated with cooler global temps. So, cooler global temps & this warm N Pac source region aren’t inconsistent.
What this really illustrates is how meaningless a global mean temp is as it applies to your local or regional weather. is a perfect case in point.
______
I wouldn’t disagree that global temps are meaningless when looking at local or regional weather, but then again, I am more a student of the climate rather than the weather, and when it comes to climate, global temps are quite meaningful and useful. Do keep in mind though, that the reason that El Nino periods are warmer is that the oceans are releasing stored up heat to the atmosphere, and so, during La Nina’s, they are cooler because the oceans are storing heat, and so the ENSO cycle is one of charging and discharging heat from the oceans, but there is no NET HEAT created by ENSO acting over time, and this is exactly their point…they act as a thermostat to keep the oceans heat within a range. That, in fact, is why the increase in ocean heat content over the past 40 years is so interesting. It would appear that, despite the ENSO cycle of charge-discharge of ocean heat, that some other factor is at play, forcing ocean heat content higher over the longer-term.