The Guardian recently ran a story titled, “‘On a whole other level’: rapid snow melt-off in American west stuns scientists”. It points out that along with an extremely low snow pack this winter, that record temperatures across the Southwest and Sierra Nevadas have left virtually no snowpack in the mountains. This snowpack is crucial for water and electric supplies in the region. What is likely coming this summer is perhaps the beginning of the radical nature of climate change being driven home to the people living there. Many of these people who have moved to the Southwest or California assuming that there will always be water in the desert, are likely to find that they are sitting in an emergency situation with rationing likely.
“Normally we’d be standing right here,” Andy Reising, manager of California department of water resource’s snow surveys and water supply forecasting unit said, gesturing at chin height. The 5ft-tall tool typically thrust deep into the high berms on 1 April poked into the brown earth next to him. “There is actually no measurable snow.”
Read the Guardian story here:
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Filed under: Olympic Peninsula |
I meant 40 years ago—when the book was published…
30 years ago, Marc Reisner’s *Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water* was a favorite. We’ve learned nothing…
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56140.Cadillac_Desert