Any hopes that this winter’s snowfall would put a dent in the ongoing drought across the west have melted away. Federal officials say the season’s snowpack is already gone in many areas — that’s earlier than usual, and generally not a great sign.
In addition, this year’s snowpack will serve as the new benchmark low in four states, including Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.
Dan McEvoy with the Western Regional Climate Center joined The Show to talk more.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: On the scale, how bad was this winter?
DAN MCEVOY: Well, it turned out to be the worst on record as far as our observational record goes for several states. And when I’m talking about worst on record, we’re talking about the snowpack, which we measure for water supply purposes in terms of the snow water equivalent or SWE, I might be saying that a few times. And that’s the amount of water that’s stored in the snowpack.
MARK BRODIE: And one of the things you found was that the melt-out date, which is basically when the snow has melted, was more than a month earlier than normal in Arizona and more than that in New Mexico and other places?
DAN MCEVOY: Yeah, that’s right. There was an incredibly early melt-out of the snowpack this year. For example, Arizona, on average, the snow disappeared 35 days earlier than average. And this is in the mountains, in the places that normally have a snowpack.
And so, this was a combination of we had this already bad snow year coming into March. Then in March, we had a record-shattering spring heat wave that set temperature records across not just Arizona and New Mexico, but much of the Western United States, and triggered this extremely early melt of the snowpack in the mountains.
And especially in places like in the higher elevations in Colorado and Utah and New Mexico, that typically are accumulating snowpack all throughout March, we had this incredibly early melt of the snowpack in an already bad snow season.
MARK BRODIE: What are the implications of — obviously, I think we know the implications of not having a whole lot of snow — but what are the implications of having the snow that we did get melt earlier than normal?
DAN MCEVOY: Well, what we really saw from this was a shift in the timing of the water that melts out of the mountains and comes into our streams and reservoirs. And so, while we still did get that water coming out of the mountains into the system, it was shifted much earlier.
And so, what we’re going to see is a lot lower stream flows and runoffs in the in the peak of the warm season. So, April through July is a common metric to look at for runoff for water supply. And this is looking to be extremely low and perhaps record low in some cases.
And why that matters is because during the warm season, this is our time when the atmospheric demand for water is highest and also the human demand for water is highest for things like irrigation and recreational use outside.
So, we’re going to have much lower amounts of water coming into the system during that peak time of the summer.
MARK BRODIE: And this is coming on the heels of, you know, it’s not like we’re coming out of a time of great abundance here to begin with.
DAN MCEVOY: No, that’s right, and particularly on the Colorado River system. So, we have the upper and lower basins. That system has been in decline for decades now. And so the past several decades have seen a number of extremely low years. The area has been in drought for a number of years. And so, this was certainly not the type of season that was going to help things out.
And really it would take on the order of somewhere around a decade or longer of really wet conditions to kind of flip things around. And so, an extremely bad snow year like this is certainly not going to help the situation at all.
MARK BRODIE: So what does this potentially mean for Arizona and the West going forward? I mean, there’s been some talk that maybe we’ll have a wetter than average monsoon season this year. What are you looking for in the months to come?
DAN MCEVOY: Yeah, well, I think in terms of the summer water supply, most of that comes from the mountains from snowmelt. So a few things. Arizona is still under that Tier 1 reduction in the Colorado River water supply. Those are based on the water levels on Lake Mead. And it’s been in place for a while, and and that’s not supposed to change.
Some of the smaller areas — particularly the lower Colorado that rely on more local water supplies — are going to have issues, and there’s already places that are starting to run out of water on those smaller local water supplies.
In terms of the monsoon, there are some long-range outlooks indicating a potential for wetter than average conditions during the monsoon season. That would be a good thing, but the bottom line is that the amount of water that we get from the monsoon season alone, even in a wet year, isn’t going to be able to reverse or change the amount of water lost to the lack of snow and the early snowmelt and the warm conditions.
MARK BRODIE: Is it fair to say that if you were going to have one above average season, that it would be better for us long term to have a more snow than average, more snowpack than average, than more monsoon activity precipitation than average?
DAN MCEVOY: Certainly, yeah. We would definitely want to have a big snow year in the mountains, particularly in the upper Colorado River Basin, as opposed to a wet monsoon season. You know, both help, but the fraction that comes from snowmelt is much higher compared to the monsoon.
MARK BRODIE: Sure. All right, we’ll have to leave it there. That is Dan McEvoy with the Western Regional Climate Center. Dan, thanks for your time and your insights, I appreciate it.
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