After the West's historic snow drought, spring could bring water shortages and wildfires
CBSN
At ski resorts across the West this winter, viral images showed chairlifts idling over brown terrain in places normally renowned for their frosty appeal. Iconic mountain towns like Aspen, Colorado, and Park City, Utah, were seen with shockingly bare slopes, as the region endured a historic snow drought that experts warn could bring water shortages and wildfires in the months ahead. In:
At ski resorts across the West this winter, viral images showed chairlifts idling over brown terrain in places normally renowned for their frosty appeal. Iconic mountain towns like Aspen, Colorado, and Park City, Utah, were seen with shockingly bare slopes, as the region endured a historic snow drought that experts warn could bring water shortages and wildfires in the months ahead.
"It's been a long time since it's been this bad," said Russ Schumacher, Colorado's state climatologist and the director of the Colorado Climate Center, a research initiative at Colorado State University that tracks extreme weather.
He said Colorado hasn't experienced such a severe snow drought in more than 40 years. Neither has Utah, said Jon Meyer, that state's climatologist, and newly released federal drought data show similar conditions in New Mexico and Arizona. All four states are contending with record-low snowpack, which is the accumulation of mountain snow that fortifies rivers, reservoirs and drinking water systems once it melts.
In mid-January, NASA released imagery that showed sparse snow cover on the Rocky Mountains and Cascades — the lowest extent recorded for that date since satellite monitoring began in 2001. That trend was consistent through much of the winter, with western snow-cover lagging far behind historical averages on most days, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
A snow drought of this magnitude has the power to disrupt fundamental aspects of life in the West, where the population relies on snowpack for roughly 75% of its water supply, multiple experts told CBS News. Because the amount of snow that falls in winter determines what's available in spring, summer and beyond, they said the repercussions of it will likely be felt for at least the rest of the year.
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