Less Snow, More Rain During The Winter In Most Of The Nation

In early February, there's usually a lot of snow
on the ground at my northwestern Vermont home.
But as you can see here, I was building
a small stone wall and putting in good soil
for a perennial garden on February 4.
It rained a little that day, too, bolstering
the notion that more winter storms are
bringing rain, not snow.

Hot on the heels of one of the most intense (but brief) New England February cold snaps in recent memory, a storm is coming.

Yeehah! That means powder day at the ski resorts, right?  It's cold, so that means snow, doesn't it?

Um, no.

Oh sure, this storm will bring some snow. As noted elsewhere on this blog, precipitation with with the storm will start as snow tonight night and Tuesday.

However, on Tuesday, in much of the Northeast, all the way up in the Adirodacks in in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, the snow will change to sleet, freezing rain, and then rain on Tuesday.

This storm is bringing quite a surge of warm air with it.

It's been that way this winter. And to be real, more rain and less snow has been a trend in most of the nation in recent years and decades.

Oh sure, there's still blockbuster snowstorms, like the Mid-Atlantic blizzard in late January and the immense snow siege in eastern New England and southeastern Canada last winter.

But the trend is for more rain, and less snow in general.

Climate Central crunched the data on winter precipitation by looking at 2,121 weather stations where snow is a pretty routine occurence in the winter.

At these weather stations, they looked at the number of days with precipitation in the months where they typically get snowstorms totalling one inch or greater. That includes mid-winter, and in places where it happens, snowfalls in the late autumn and early spring - the so-called shoulder seasons.

Overall, the Climate Central analysis found that 55 percent of these weather stations showed a decrease in winter precipitation falling as snow.

The greatest drop offs were in those shoulder seasons of late autumm and early spring. That makes sense. Temperatures are normally more marginal for snow then than in the depths of winter, so on balance it takes less of a temperature change in the fall and spring to switch snow over to rain.

It doesn't strike me as any one particular region of the country saw the steepest dropoff in snowy days in favor of rain.

The states with the greatest percentages of their weather stations seeing more snowy season rains are, in order, Oregon, Iowa, New Hampshire, Washington and Kansas, says Climate Central.

The implications of this, of course, are that ski resorts and winter sports enthusiasts suffer because of this.

So do tourist-dependent governments.

Here where I live in Vermont, the warm, relatively snow-free winter we've been having are starting to create budget problems for the state.

"This isn't looking good for us," said Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin last week, reports NECN. "The mountains are struggling. Our receipts - our tax receipts - are seeing a direct hit from the fact that we're not bringing 4 million skiers in this year. We're bringing in a lesser amount. That could change, but it's got to change mighty fast."

Luckily, last winter in Vermont was kind of snowy and the ski season went well then. But the Vermont legislature is already dealing with a tight budget, and the drop in rooms and meals taxes, amd sales taxes this winter is going to hurt.

Plus, if this trend of less and less snowy winters continues, Vermont and other winter tourism-dependent states will really need to find a new revenue source and/or cut spending further.

In the West, many areas depend upon the slow trickle of snow melt during the spring and summer from the mountains for their water needs. But if more precipitation falls as rain, all that water will run off the mountains in the winter, rather than summer.

Some reservoirs can catch that winter rain instead of waiting for the summer snow melt. But other reservoirs don't have that capacity. That means a water storage headache for much of that region.

Less snow means the ground turns bare in the western mountains earlier in the spring. Which means the land dries earlier and more completely in the spring and summer, leading to an increased risk of wild fires.

That was part of the problem last summer. There wasn't much snow in the western mountains, it melted early, setting the stage for a long, destructive season of wildfires.

Some people hate snow, but even if you hate it, consider it a necessary evil. And things could become more evil if the trend line for less and less snow continues.

Australian Drought Relief Is F#@*ing Great, Says Cop

Water starts to flow in an Australian river for
the first time in four years, and an observer is
thrilled beyond belief.

Queensland, Australia has had a nasty drought for four years now.

Some welcome rain arrived recently, and when water started flowing again in a remote river for the first time in four years, a man who works at the local police station couldn't contain his excitement

It's like the famous "double rainbow man" video, except with LOTS more swearing.

Watch it because it's so much, but it is NSFW because of language:

What IF California Runs Out Of Water In Its Big Current Drought?

A scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech caused a stir earlier this month when he said California's drought has gotten so bad there's only a year's worth of water left.  

All of California is in drought, and much
of the state is still in exceptional drought (dark red) 

In a Los Angeles Times op ed, the scientist, Jay Famiglietti, pulled no punches:

"Right now the state has only about a year of water supply left in its reservoirs and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus year mega-drought) except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain."

Famiglietti's statement created headlines around the world. It did seem dire. What does a state with 38.8 milliion residents do when the water taps run dry?

Famiglietti said groundwater is being pumped out so fast that land is sinking by a as much as one foot per year in California's Central Valley.

We also know that snow in the Sierra Nevada at the moment is something like 12 percent of normal. The snow is important because as it slowly melts in the spring and summer, it fills reservoirs and supplies cities and agriculture through a large chunk of the state.

Of course, every water faucet in California won't stop running in one instant exactly one year from now. Different parts of the state have different degrees of drought, though the entire state is in trouble with the dry, hot weather that has persisted for four years now.

Some people dispute Famiglietti's assertion about the state having only a year's supply of water left.

News10 ABC in Sacramento quotes Jeanine Jones, the Interstate Resources Manager with the California Department of Water Resources as saying the situation isn't as dire as Famiglietti suggests.

"Jones said the LA Times article was not entirely accurate, especially the claim about the state only having on year of water left in the supply. 

'I thnk it's perhaps written from the perspective of an academic who is less familiar with how water operations actually work at the water agency supply level,' said Jones."

Jones told ABC 10 said some rain this winter has filled reservoirs above last year's low levels.

Still, there's no doubt California is short on water, and no major rains are in the forecast as the quote, unquote rainy season comes to a close.

The Sacramento Bee reported this week that the California Water Resources Control Board ordered every water agency in the state to restrict how much everyone can water their lawns and landscaping.

This is the first time any state has imposed emergency water conservation measures on every local water agency within its borders, the Sacramento Bee said.

Among the restrictions are rules that ban landscape irrigation on rainy days and withing 48 hours of measureable rain. Restaurants must not serve water to patrons unless the customers ask for it, and hotels should offer guests the option to skip washing linens, according to the Sacramento Bee article.

But will this go far enough?

The Gizmodo blog offered some suggestions, including letting the grass on lawns and golf courses statewide turn brown rather than watering them.

Gizmodo says most bottled water comes from California so that should stop, too. And how about closing car washes? Planting native plants instead of water-sucking landscapes? Having techies develop alternative water supplies, such as desalination plants?

Whatever happens, it's not going to be easy to get through this drought in California. The longer it goes on, the harder it is to deal with.

It's going to be a long, hot fiery, dry, thirsty summer in California.

Let's hope that NASA scientist is too pessimistic.