Snowpack and Snow Water Equivalent Looking Dandy in the Northern Rockies
Northern Rockies snowpack looks pretty impressive for mid-January this morning, with Montana (top image below) and the rest of the West (bottom image below) mapped by river basin.
Not too surprisingly, at least to some, snowpack / snow water equivalent distributions match up astoundingly close to the climate predictions issued back in early November (posted in The Odds of a La Nina Winter Keep Going Up), with the key image from NOAH’s Climate Center posted below again (it’s the forecast precipitation for the December | January | February block, published in November).
Predictions at that time suggested a La Nina pattern was setting up, which tends to produce moisture distribution patterns across the nation pretty much like what we’ve seen over the past quarter.
It’s Time to Tell the Damn Truth About Snowpack Data
Over on another fly fishing site you might have heard of there’s a link to an article (on Inside Climate News) discussing current snowpack data which somehow fails to offer a single mention of ENSO Oscillations (La Nina / El Nino) and their obviously critical impacts on precipitation/moisture distributions across the country, even though good climate science detailing this information is a few clicks away and presented in a way even non-climate scientists can understand.
Misrepresenting the data, as the article does by omitting ENSO influences, not only clouds (no pun intended) the issue but intends to mislead, to what purpose you can decide for yourself.
Solving the challenge of the growing demand for water in the West, particularly driven by burgeoning metropolitan areas, AND keeping water in the rivers for we recreationists, won’t be easy and calls for clearheaded thinking based upon sound and comprehensive science and historical information, not cherry-picking data to make your point.
A Final Uncomfortable Irony
And even the Inside Climate News article points out that water storage is inadequate to meet demand, suggesting there’s a need for more water storage, which implies we’ll actually need more of those dreaded damns to store water –
…Climate scientists say snow seasons like the West is experiencing now will become more common in the next few decades. If winter snows don’t come, there won’t be much water to fill the reservoirs, potentially leaving cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles dry in the future…
…If the same trend continues in the coming years, water managers will have to make extensive—and expensive—adjustments to water storage and distribution…
Ironic indeed, though some new tailwater fisheries might just be created in the process…
