Nothing to see here, move along.
In California and other states, snowfall is critical to fresh water supplies. In the mostly arid climate west of the Rockies, snow cover laid down on the mountains in winter is a liquid checking account that is usually drawn down each summer and fall when rainfall is sparse. As California heads into another year of drought, the snow-white bank account in the mountains is unusually low on funds.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured two natural-color images of the snow cover in the Sierra Nevada in California and Nevada. The top image was acquired on March 27, 2010, the last year with average winter snowfall in the region. The second image was acquired on March 29, 2015. In addition to the significantly depleted snow cover, note the change of color in the Central Valley of California and the lack of snow in the interior of Nevada. (Most of the white in 2015 is cloud cover.)
Looking closely at the Tuolumne River Basin in the Sierra Nevada, scientists working with NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) found the snowpack there contained just 40 percent as much water in 2015 as it did at its highest level in 2014—which was already one of the two driest years in California’s recorded history. In its first springtime acquisition of 2015, the ASO team quantified the total volume of water contained in the basin: On March 25, the mountain snowpack was 74,000 acre-feet, or 24 billion gallons. In the same week of 2014, the snow total was 179,000 acre-feet.
Below, graph from ClimateCentral compares current snowpack to recent history.
The beginning of April marks the end of the winter wet season across the West, the time of year when much of the region sees the bulk of its precipitation. But for the third winter in a row, that wet season has come up dry, extending the terrible drought that is now in its fourth year.
At the end of the rainy season, drought covers nearly two-thirds of the West and is affecting more than 52 million people, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The very worst drought conditions stretch across California up into southeastern Oregon and into Nevada.
That intense drought has built up over multiple years as a stubborn high pressure ridge has kept temperatures unusually high and blocked most of the storms that would normally bring rain and snow.
Perhaps this article, and the issue it describes, should be brought to the attention of this womanCarly Fiorina: Environmentalists To Blame For ‘Man-Made’ Drought In California
and tell her that building a reservoir isn’t much good if there is not enough water to fill it.
Except for the more sane hairdo, Carly is in many ways the female equivalent of Donald Trump—-especially in thinking that she could be a viable candidate for president.