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March heat in American west has left snowpack at record-low levels
- slwvx 6mo agoI own land and water shares in the Great Basin and can confirm that this is real. On a more positive note, one random person in the area unexpectedly confirmed that they thought global warming was indeed real.
- bayarearefugee 6mo agoShouldn't we be past being "stunned"? The past 11 years are the hottest 11 years on record. Climate catastrophe is coming, soon. Everybody knows this, even the vocal deniers (the ones with power, not the sheep they feed propaganda to). They've simply decided to profit off it instead of trying to slow it down. The "drill, baby, drill", "clean beautiful coal" lunacy and wanting to invade Greenland and Canada are all directly related.
- SirFatty 6mo agoAh, but "stuns" gets the clicks!
- realo 6mo agoThe polar bears are drowning up north. I would say climate catastrophe is already here... at least for them.
- hervature 6mo agoThe polar bear population has steadily been increasing since the 1960s [1]. Basically double what it was. The more falsifiable information you use the less you are helping the cause. [1] - https://thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2024/02/Crockford-State-of-Polar-Bears-2023.pdf https://thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2024/02/Crockford-State-...
- tinyplanets 6mo agoThis report was published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which according to Wikipedia "is a climate change denial lobby group registered as a charitable organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated aims are to challenge what it calls "extremely damaging and harmful policies" envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming. The GWPF, and some of its prominent members individually, practise and promote climate change denial." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Warming_Policy_Foun... So it sounds like they (and I assume you) definitely have an agenda you're trying to promote.
- billfor 6mo agoPost the correct facts rather than arguing about the source. Here’s the most recent report from a “correct” source. https://www.iucn-pbsg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/PBSG-Status-Criteria-and-Report_Final_2024Oct7.pdf https://www.iucn-pbsg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/PBSG-St... Read that and explain why the population is decreasing — the only point he made was that it was not.
- hervature 6mo agoThank you. You read my post for its substance and interacted with it in good faith. You are a true HNer and if you are ever in LV, I will gladly buy you a beer.
- hervature 6mo agoTo be honest, I just looked up the report and did not not notice it came from there. My only agenda was that it was the only report that clearly showed the average and CI of the different studies throughout the years. WWF links to the actual report [1] which is found at [2]. They try their very hardest to not show that the population is either stable or increasing. If you look at decreases, for example in Davis Strait, it is a loss of 1% with 0% in the 95% interval. Anyway, I do admit that linking from that website is not a good look but all I did was link the report and I am not advocating for anything else on their website. My larger point, the climate change community does not need the polar bears to drive their point. It is a bad example and we should use one of the many other verifiable sources (ice sheet loss, sea level rise, droughts, etc.) instead. [1] - https://www.arcticwwf.org/wildlife/polar-bear/polar-bear-population/ https://www.arcticwwf.org/wildlife/polar-bear/polar-bear-pop... [2] - https://www.iucn-pbsg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/PBSG-Status-Criteria-and-Report_Final_2024Oct7.pdf https://www.iucn-pbsg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/PBSG-St...
- czinck 6mo agoYes, winters are getting worse and worse, but this year was really bad, way worse than any predictions. I was in Park City in February and there was so little snow it looked like summer, and that was before the streak of warm and dry weather this article is talking about. I literally hiked up to the 2002/2034 Olympic facilities in 55 degree weather with no snow on the ground, while the Olympics were still going on in Milan. And I was in Park City because they had more snow than Colorado...
- blipvert 6mo agoCan’t remember the exact quote, but there is something in The Omen II about future wars being fought over food (Thorn corporation being involved in agriculture/fertiliser or something). Last time that I saw it I wondered if the Ukraine conflict might be about control of the “Breadbasket of Europe” as much as anything.
- everdrive 6mo agoBut of course Thomas Malthus was wrong about everything and we just keep need to growing populations.
- wak90 6mo agoIt's pretty indicative of the situation that you're unironically trying to say Malthus was right about some things, actually.
- nradov 6mo agoControl over European food supplies might have been a minor factor in Putin's decision to invade Ukraine but that was secondary to establishing a greater Russian empire with defensible strategic depth. A lot of Ukraine's wheat exports went to Egypt and they have suffered significant food cost inflation due to the war.
- lazystar 6mo agoI don't see the point in comparing photos of snow coverage in feb 2026 to the same area in march 2026. March is a spring month, of course snow coverage will be worse. Itd be more shocking if the snow coverage increased. they should show march 2026 vs. march 2025/2024/2023 etc.
- ctoa 6mo agoWhere I'm at in the Sierra, March is typically very close to as snowy as Dec/Jan/Feb and the snowpack is still increasing, not decreasing. Late March is typically the peak depth. March avg snowfall is 62", this year we got 1", the driest March on record, on top of it being incredibly warm.
- Reubachi 6mo agoConversly in east, wettest/snowiest jan-march on recent record. Today, april second, we got snow in coastal new hampshire. Which of course isn't an antithesis to the lack of snow in the west, and likely is literally the flip side of the "same problem". but interesting
- lapetitejort 6mo agoAs a naive tourist, I did not know this. I drove up to Sequoia National Park in March 2011 hoping to camp. The roads were plowed, with eight feet tall snow on either side of the road. I drove up to a visitor center and asked where to camp. The park ranger said I could camp anywhere I wanted. Maybe he assumed I knew what I was doing. But I did not. After walking around the parking lot for a bit, with nowhere else to go, I drove out.
- ourmandave 6mo agoI was naively hoping they were stunned because it wasn't as much as they expected.
- bpt3 6mo agoI have to ask because this makes no sense to me: In the article, there is a picture of 3 workers taking a snow survey and finding "zero measurement of snow". This is reported as "the second lowest since 2015". How is any measurement of a quantity of an item less than zero? You can't have negative snow to my knowledge.
- munificent 6mo agoThe writing in this article indeed isn't great. I believe what they're saying is that the 2015 measurement was also zero. So this year's measurement isn't the "second-lowest", it's the "second equally lowest". That's the only way I could interpret it.
- shagmin 6mo agoI just kind of assumed they meant no additional snow to add to the accumulated amount they have for the season compared to 2015.
- patchorang 6mo agoThere are quite a few comments here talking about how comparing images from feb/march isn’t useful. Here’s data on what’s going on. This snowtel location is within the Utah picture in the article. https://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/dbdata/station/swegraph/swegraph_hc.html?snotels=BRIU1&years=-2016-2017-2018-2019-2020-2021-2022-2023-2024-2025-2026&coloryrs=1&show_stats=0&show_mean=1 https://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/dbdata/station/swegraph/swegraph_...
- UncleOxidant 6mo agoWhere can I find similar data for the Columbia River basin? That's where we're going to see large impacts on hydropower production come mid-to-late summer, I suspect. Impacts for the PNW and CA.
- patchorang 6mo agoIn the filter you can change the SNOTEL site. You probably need to pull up a snotel site map and find one in the region you’re interested in.
- FpUser 6mo ago[flagged]
- mschaef 6mo agoFrom the sound of it, You may know this already, but there was a 1950's era plan to do something very similar to what you imply here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power...
- bix6 6mo agoColorado river collapsing this year?
- saltcured 6mo agoOur whole flood control and water supply system is designed around the expected storage of water as snow. Ignoring horrifying drought scenarios, it is also troubling to think about how this will change if we start having warm winters and more of the winter precipitation as rain. I think the worst case would be if we end up like some tropical countries, where they can have disastrous flooding and then drought in very short cycles. The water comes all at once and you cannot hope to control or contain it. But there are also gaps that strain the ability to store enough water and manage consumption rates.
- scarecrowbob 6mo agoI'm on Colorado's Western Slope. Last summer we got about no precipitation for 2 months and then 6" in one day. Wooo... very fun. Even better, in some place like Ruidoso, NM (where I've lived) there have been pretty massive deforestations from wildfires with the result being that it floods about any time it rains. I've spent about 3-5hr/day for the last 4 weeks trying to get rid of stuff that burns as far out from my shacks as I can, but I would bet that when it burns, it's going to go big. Not looking forward to that.
- justonepost2 6mo agoJust another few million blackwells bro and the AGI will solve it for us.