While it is well known that much of the West relies on snowpack for water storage, the vital role of snowpack in flood control is considerably less appreciated.
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But the state's next official snowpack measurement set for Feb.
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Compare the current snowpack (above) to this time last year.
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Your investment portfolio is like the snowpack in the mountains.
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The snowpack is now down to 83 percent of average.
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Researchers can also look at snowpack in tree ring records.
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The snowpack operates like a water tap for the state.
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They were familiar with the properties and behavior of snowpack.
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To appreciate just how striking that snowpack statistic is, consider this: When Mr. Brown attended the final snowpack measurement of the season in April 2015, there was not a patch of snow in sight.
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Without a flurry of storms to add to the snowpack in the next few months, the low snowpack could eventually lead to supply problems, especially if dry conditions persist for the next few years.
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Scientists measured snowpack — the amount of water in snow — at nearly 700 sites spread across western mountain ranges over six decades, 1955 to 2016, and carried out many computer simulations of snowpack levels over time.
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But when it happens too soon, it melts the snowpack prematurely.
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Refilled reservoirs are good news, but California also needs more snowpack.
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The Sierra Nevada snowpack is now at 103 percent of normal.
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The thin California snowpack is also a function of high temperatures.
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The storms have replenished the major reservoirs and the Sierra Nevada snowpack.
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Statewide, the snowpack was about 150 percent of normal for late March.
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As snowpack melts and refreezes, individual ice grains tend to get larger.
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Storms hit California in January, sending the snowpack 115 percent above normal.
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The snowpack is critical to helping solve the state's years-long drought.
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They also provide much of the snowpack and water supply for California.
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As of last week, the snowpack stood at 150 percent of normal.
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Welcome rain has come, and the snowpack is above normal in many places.
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"The snowpack is the critical resource in the western United States," Painter said.
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After Washington officials recorded the lowest snowpack in state history last May, Gov.
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The state's system relies heavily on winter snowpack, which has been steadily shrinking.
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In 2015, in the Sierras the snowpack was the lowest in 500 years.
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Road repair work and hazardous conditions created by melting snowpack caused further delays.
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In California, low snowpack has been directly tied to the rise in wildfires.
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Snow and wind create "slabs," which in turn create weakness in the snowpack.
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About this time in 2015, the snowpack measured a paltry 4 inches of snow.
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This is all great, but of course, we need snowpack, not just refilled reservoirs.
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But in Northeastern Europe, warmer winters mean earlier snowmelt-caused floods and less snowpack.
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Even the Los Angeles Aqueduct will stall someday if Sierra snowpack continues to dwindle.
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Climate change has produced higher temperatures, which could melt away the snowpack before summer.
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The snowpack conditions in the Sierra this year may be an extreme example of what scientists suggest will be the case with climate change — that as average temperatures rise, average snowpack will decline, perhaps by as much as 25 percent by midcentury.
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In the same location near Tioga Pass, the snowpack is more than 200 inches deep.
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Although avalanches do happen year-round in the Northwest, rain can make the snowpack unstable.
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The snowpack in the Midwest will continue melting through the summer, causing rivers to swell.
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This near-shore sediment load represents a looming risk, much like snowpack in avalanche country.
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Knowing just how much water will be coming out of the snowpack is key for preparation.
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I crest a ridge, and see miles of mountains covered in snowpack almost into central Greece.
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These are the storms that are responsible for recharging our reservoirs and building up our snowpack.
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High mountain snowpack supplies drinking water throughout vast areas of Northern California and the Mountain West.
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The snowpack supplies about 30 percent of California's water, particularly in the spring and summer months.
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Winter snowpack melts into spring runoff and eventually travels south to refill lower-lying surface reservoirs.
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In the distance, the Hengduan mountains slump under their snowpack as if crumpled beneath its weight.
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Northern California's snowpack provides a slow-release reservoir for nearly all of California during the summer.
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Drought is more complicated because of the multiple factors — temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, snowpack levels — involved.
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Nordman explains that an excess amount of snowpack could slow down the race at certain times.
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Mountain goats, another iconic Glacier species, bed down on lingering snowpack to cool off in summer.
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"More snow last week and more rain this week ... has added stress to the snowpack," Mattice said.
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In other words, the presence of a deep snowpack tends to make cold air masses even colder.
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"You don't look at how fast it's retreating, you ask, 'did it retain any snowpack'," he said.
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On the one hand, loss of snowpack is raising stream temperatures where this heat-intolerant fish lives.
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As that snowpack melts, it adds moisture to the mountain forests, leaving them less susceptible to fire.
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In other parts of the world, climate change has been linked to drought or decreases in snowpack.
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One recent study found that deforestation in South America affects rainfall and snowpack across the Pacific states.
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Closer to home, the snowpack in the Sierra is at just 14 percent of the historical average.
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Global warming is taking a severe toll on the snowpack that feeds the river, the scientists found.
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Months of drenching storms and melting snowpack have replenished reservoirs, which began drying up in late 2011.
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On Wednesday, the statewide snowpack was only 55 percent of the historical average, according to government data.
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The state's snowpack in the central Sierras region where Oroville is located sits at 183 percent of normal.
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In the western US, the mountain snowpack slowly discharges water as it melts in the spring and summer.
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Rainfall managed to fill some reservoirs to above-average depths, but snowpack was still short of historical averages.
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Yes, that's four critical locations across California reporting snowpack that's at or above normal levels for this date.
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Snowpack is measured in "snow water equivalent," or how much water would result if the snow were melted.
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That means more of the melting snowpack never gets off the mountain to the valley below, he said.
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It also means the loss of a reliable snowpack and meltwater upon which both humans and animals depend.
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Laugh, love, take risks, and, if you find the carcass of a Tall One, preserve it in snowpack.
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This system relies on the natural reservoir of mountain snowpack, which melts gradually over the spring and summer.
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The recent drought has highlighted the pressure that a changing climate puts on a snowpack-dependent water system.
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For years, water demand has increased but supply has fallen as the warming climate diminishes Mount Shasta's snowpack.
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As a result of the cloud seeding program, it's seeing an 8% to 15% percent increase in snowpack.
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The rain, in some cases, dropped onto snowpack and frozen ground that weren't able to absorb the downpour.
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Armando Quintero and Frank Gehrke plunge the survey tube into the snowpack at Phillips Station, near Echo Summit, Calif.
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Flood risk is determined by analyzing snowpack and drought conditions, soil moisture, and frost depth as well as rainfall.
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Its amenities include a dozen radio-linked meteorological towers, snowpack sensors, tree-sap monitors, and a stream-depth gauge.
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That allowed for the snowpack to melt and raise the Ausable River by 10 feet, Goff tells The Verge.
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What's more, this region accumulates so much snowpack in the winter that it doesn't seem to become water-limited.
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Across the state, all three snow sensors are recording snowpack above normal, with a statewide average of 114 percent.
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No matter that the California drought has resulted in snowpack that in some places is 30 percent of average.
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The snowpack in the southern Colorado mountains was less than 50 percent of normal this month, InsideClimate News reported.
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Those storms left a mountain snowpack that, while ordinary by historical standards, far exceeded the meager accumulations of 2015.
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For the second month in a row, California's Sierra Nevada mountains have a higher-than-average snowpack, Reuters reports.
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Warmer winters in the region will lead to a reduction in the mountain snowpack, which will increase wildfire risk.
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Vermont's forests rely on a thick blanket of snowpack between winter and spring to keep trees and soils healthy.
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And as the state's vast Sierra Nevada snowpack gradually melts, it will keep feeding reservoirs into the late spring.
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Before deciding to open a slope, resort ski patrols use explosives to release loose snow and test the snowpack.
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A new study by NASA, plus Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Earth System Research Laboratory shows that atmospheric rivers might increase the chances of a phenomenon called "rain-on-snow," which is pretty much what you'd expect: rain falling on top of snowpack, which would accelerate the melting of the snowpack.
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The American west in particular already has a snowpack problem, which means less water for drinking and powering hydroelectric plants.
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Also, the snowpack (essentially water in storage) in the Sierra Nevada mountain range is at its biggest in 22 years.
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That is significant since the snowpack supplies about 30 percent of California's water particularly in the spring and summer months.
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That is significant since the snowpack supplies about 30 percent of California's water particularly in the spring and summer months.
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The entire region has been plagued by drought and decreasing snowpack, with some landlocked states suffering the most severe shortages.
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For example, all the observations in eastern Idaho and western Wyoming showed declines in snowpack, but the model predicted increases.
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The University of Washington's Mass noted that some of the new study's results were consistent with his own snowpack work.
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But as the years of unrelenting drought wear on, the snowpack has grown thin and the lake has been shriveling.
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The goal is to gather a complete picture of the snowpack, which is far from a uniform blanket of white.
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If the pollutants aren't curbed, it said, the snowpack could be cut in half by the end of the century.
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At one of the ice patches, Taylor and his colleagues discovered wooden artifacts that had melted out of the snowpack.
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That's welcome news and reflects the impact of 85033's excellent snowpack and runoff into Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
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The snowpack — which keeps the water flowing into the early summer as the snow melts — is 161 percent of normal.
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Rain runs off immediately, while snowpack serves as a reservoir of water that is released over time as it melts.
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He expects hydro generation on the West Coast to be stronger year-over-year due to this year's abundant mountain snowpack.
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This constant melting and refreezing can loosen the snowpack, especially in back country areas that aren't groomed by the ski resorts.
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The snowpack had all but disappeared, more than a million acres of agricultural fields lay idle, and 66 million trees died.
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Reservoirs are filling back up and snowpack is at a a statewide average of 103 percent for this time of year.
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In Northern California, there's already signs of the Sierra snowpack melting faster into Oroville Dam, one of the state's largest reservoirs.
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These are further computed into stream-flow forecasts for individual watersheds based on knowledge of temperature, soil moisture, snowpack, and terrain.
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This year, California snowpack on the Sierra Nevadas, which eventually melt and fill reservoirs, grew during the first half of March.
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But now the snowpack here is more like that at lower elevations, "where it will accumulate, melt, accumulate, melt," he said.
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Further north, the Sierras are expecting up to two feet of snow this week which will help replenish our nonexistent snowpack.
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California faces a similar, but different, problem with climate change keeping the Sierra Nevada range too warm for a strong snowpack.
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I'm relatively certain they weren't talking about snow, but let's pretend they were anyway: Global warming threatens to wreak havoc on snowpack.
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Statewide, the average snowpack (essentially water in storage) is almost twice the normal level for late January, according to the weekly monitor.
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Record rainfall and snowpack in parts of the state earlier this year delayed the state of the wildfire season in some places.
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Both the observations and modeling showed widespread declines in snowpack, according to the results published this month in Climate and Atmospheric Science.
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This new work follows a similar 2005 study by the same team showing snowpack declines out west, but to a lesser extent.
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And in a few locations — Big South in northern Colorado and Siskiyou Summit in western Oregon, for example — snowpack has actually increased.
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This year especially has seen an uptick in the number of deaths due to a particularly large snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas.
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Out of that, they determined that it will likely take about four years for the snowpack level deficit to be paid off.
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Snowpack is a kind of base-layer of snow that accumulates at higher altitudes and sticks around throughout the spring and summer.
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The California Department of Water Resources also tracks snowpack for the Sierras and the news is just as notable on that front.
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The Sierra snowpack historically reaches its peak around April but Rippey said California may have already hit the peak earlier than normal.
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NASA found that combining April 1 snowpack measurements from 2013 through 2016 yielded 92 percent of the snow observed just this year.
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Some programs try to increase precipitation to boost the local water supply, while others shoot for thicker snowpack at local ski resorts.
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Since 1958, the amount of early April snowmelt going into the Rio Grande has dropped 22013% due to less snowpack and evaporation.
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Before we ring the victory bells, we mustn't forget that the legacy of this year's unusually low snowpack is still very real.
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"What's critically important for most of the water we rely on in California is that time-release snowpack storage," said Dr. Swain.
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Researchers here are reconstructing snowpack data by examining tree ring records across the entire western United States for the last 7753,000 years.
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Today, however, there is less snowpack than ever, and the river is still hamstrung by obligations that are nearly a century old.
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The state-wide snowpack is running far below average to date and there is little relief in sight before the season ends.
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Aided by the recent storms, the snowpack for the central Sierra mountains was at 182 percent of its normal level on Sunday.
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Even though much of the state is out of drought, it will take time for the snowpack to replenish the groundwater basins.
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And critically, mountains are losing snowpack, which is vital for providing people with water (via snowmelt) during the warm or dry season.
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"The stage had been set where we had quite a bit of above-normal snowpack in the upper Great Plains," she said.
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A critical measure, the snowpack, which provides water as it melts into the spring, was at 94 percent of normal statewide last week.
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California farmers depend on water from snowpack in places like the Sierra Nevada; currently, those sources are at about 20% of normal levels.
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Then in the spring, the snowpack will melt and trickle down to fill surface water reservoirs and hopefully bring down soaring water prices.
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"There are layers of concern in the snowpack in many parts of this region (and others)," wrote Klassen on his nongovernmental organization's website.
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The snowpack is twice the volume of last year's, and 21 times larger than 2015's level, which was the lowest on record.
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The Sierra Nevada snowpack has fallen below normal levels, and state data show Californians have been slipping in their monthly water-savings efforts.
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When California's snowpack dwindled last year to a tiny fraction of its normal size, the state mandated steep reductions in urban water use.
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California experienced the heaviest snowfall since 22017, leaving the snowpack 85 percent higher than average, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
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A warming climate is excepted to bring higher temperatures and changes to precipitation, snowpack and water flow throughout the West, the report found.
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The diminishing snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, for example, is seen as one of the causes of the drought currently impacting California.
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The snowpack is particularly important to California's drought picture because when the snow melts, the water runs off and refills the state's reservoirs.
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As of Friday, the Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial water source after the winter, was at nearly 170 percent of its historical average.
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Much more telling, electronic readings across the whole of the Sierra Nevada on Tuesday indicated the snowpack was about 70 percent of normal.
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Second, we need to acknowledge that a water system that relies on snowpack for both water storage and flood control is increasingly risky.
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To make up for loss of snowpack, we need to build infrastructure that enables us to use excess runoff to recharge groundwater aquifers.
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For another, climate change has produced a steady uptick in temperatures, which means that the snowpack might not survive the start of summer.
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But when I visited Yosemite National Park in April for an article about the snowpack, high spring temperatures were already melting it quickly.
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Flood watches have been issued across the Midwest and Great Plains amid concerns that heavy rains will melt snowpack and trigger significant flooding.
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Brian Merrill, the chief executive of Western River Expeditions, based in Salt Lake City, said snowpack had fallen sharply with warm March temperatures.
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Vermont's snowpack — which keeps temperatures within range for maple syrup and maintains soil health — has been melting faster over the years, writes CNBC.
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But the frequency won't continue rising forever — after a certain threshold, the number of avalanches is limited by the speed with which snowpack accumulates.
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"It's a matter or managing a big snowpack with full reservoirs and making sure there's not any downstream damage from high releases," Gehrke said.
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The thick spring snowpack is raising fears of flooding if temperatures suddenly warm up and heavy rain were to fall in the coming weeks.
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But five years of sustained drought have reduced the snowpack to half its usual size, the state Department of Water Resources reported this week.
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The snowpack acts like a backup reservoir, providing about 30 percent of the state's water supply as it melts during the spring and summer.
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The details: The floods have resulted from a series of events including an extremely cold winter that allowed a thick snowpack to pile up.
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When the snowpack melted, the swamp disappeared; by August 11, the slush was flowing into Lowell Lake, located at the end of the glacier.
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Thanks to El Niño, the snowpack is the deepest it has been in five years, with an average water content of 2670% of normal.
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A NASA program is recruiting citizen scientists to measure snowpack in the backcountry of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, according to the Associated Press.
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"Fairly significant weather event added rain and snow to the snowpack over the last few days followed by clearing and cooling today," Klassen said.
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For example, cloud seeding tests in Wyoming — where snowpack is a primary source of water — reportedly increased snowfall in the area by 5-15%.
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The rising waters, which filled some rivers to near-record levels, were caused by a mix of heavy rain, melting snowpack and frozen ground.
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Snowpack levels are crucial indicators of whether California will have enough water after the winter, as the melting snow flows into the state's reservoirs.
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The snowpack — which keeps the water flowing into the early summer as the snow melts — was at 163 percent above normal as of Friday.
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Reservoirs were parched, and the snowpack that helps feed the state's rivers and streams with its spring thaw had been nearly nonexistent at times.
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As of Friday, the water content in the state's snowpack was about 160 percent of what is considered normal for this time of year.
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The state conducted a snowpack survey last week, which showed frozen water supply in the Sierras at just 53 percent of the early-January average.
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Narrative storytelling on VR headsets remains a generally terrible experience in 2016, and the green shoots are barely poking out from the Park City snowpack.
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California's Sierra Nevada mountain snowpack stood at 27 percent of normal statewide as of Wednesday, according to the state Department of Water Resources data website.
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Secondly, the new paper shows that even a strong El Nino would not have been able to fully replenish the snowpack depleted by the drought.
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California also depends on diversions of water from the Colorado River, which itself depends on snowpack high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Utah.
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But with a looming drought, that melting snowpack is no longer reliable—it's currently less than 10 percent of normal for this time of year.
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They reduce snowpack because more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, and snow accumulates at higher elevations than before, meaning less terrain is covered.
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"With climate change, we're seeing temperatures increasing and snowpack decreasing all across the Sierra," Sarah Stock, a Yosemite wildlife biologist, said in the trust's statement.
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That's because climate change is warming our winters, reducing our snowpack, and shortening our seasons — all changes that make it difficult to participate in snowsports.
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Since then, nearly 18 inches of precipitation have fallen in the Northern Sierra, where snowpack acts as a vital reservoir for the state's water supply.
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Taking an even longer view, a new analysis from U.C.L.A. warned about what greenhouse gas emissions will mean for the Sierra snowpack, according to KPCC.
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Our water system was designed and built in an old climate, one in which extremely warm years were less common and snowpack was more reliable.
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In addition, flood watches have been issued across the Midwest and Great Plains amid concerns that heavy rains will melt snowpack and trigger significant flooding.
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In five of the last seven years the snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin on March 2628 has registered below the long-term average.
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According to the DWR, when the Sierra Nevada snowpack melts in warmer months, it replenishes about 30% of California's water needs later in the year.
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Using NASA data, we compared this year's snowpack in the Sierra Nevada with that of 2015, when the state was in the grip of drought.
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It is one of a string of storms that have swelled snowpack in California to above-average levels, delighting farmers and skiers following years of drought.
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The snowpack is important since it supplies about 30 percent of the state's water needs particularly in the warmer months when there's little or no rainfall.
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Also, some of the fresh snow may not be able to attach to the existing snowpack tightly enough, which will make the avalanche danger even higher.
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A string of winter storms has swelled snowpack in California to above-average levels, delighting farmers in need of water and skiers in search of powder.
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The satellite images provide a more complete picture of the snowpack than the oft-used ground sensors, which are typically stationed at more accessible middle elevations.
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A warm spell hitting parts of California has raised the risk that the state's Sierra snowpack could melt too fast and produce flooding in some areas.
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As of Friday morning, the Sierra snowpack was 178 percent of average for this time of year and had approximately 47 inches of liquid on average.
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The mild and short winter has yielded relatively little snowpack in many regions of the country, which means there will be less snow melting come spring.
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Many of those concerns stem from the effects of climate change and the structure of Sierra forests, which can influence how the snowpack accumulates and melts.
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With warm spring temperatures, the snowpack here was past its peak, with the water equivalent declining by more than three inches in less than two weeks.
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It's also proving to be more agile than scientists had previously reckoned with, moving up from the depths of the snowpack in the years since 1998.
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The Sierra Nevada snowpack today provides 22040% of California's fresh water, serving 2395 million people, according to researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles.
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Communities are still dealing with the consequences, as snow — from the cyclone, earlier winter storms, and the storm's rains that melted snowpack elsewhere — gushed into rivers.
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Climbing 1,000 feet higher, we ran into a military man and his wife, then bumped into them again at about 6,500 feet, where the snowpack began.
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In just over a week, 4 inches of Eagle Island's snowpack melted -- that's about 20% of the island's total seasonal snow accumulation, NASA's Earth Observatory said.
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Glacial ice and winter snowpack store water, slowly releasing it, feeding rivers upon which European nations have depended upon in the warmer months, since time immemorial.
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By comparison, the snowpack was reported as about 5 percent of average the day Mr. Brown stood on the barren field and ordered mandatory water conservation.
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Meanwhile, less winter snowpack actually leads to cooler winter temperatures, said Templer, which in turn disrupt tree roots, keeping them from absorbing nitrogen from the soil.
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And while California's snowpack is now a healthy 180 percent of normal, just two years ago it sank to the lowest levels seen in half a millennium.
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The hyped and hoped for strong El Nino barely made a dent in California's snowpack deficit, and that is not good news for the state's water supply.
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Warming is also shifting snowpack patterns in ways that, if continued as projected in the future, could lead to less water flowing through the Colorado River Basin.
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Precipitation heading north has a much better opportunity to fall as snow in the Sierras, Cascades, and Rockies, replenishing the snowpack that provides long-term drought protection.
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The mountains of the High Sierra and the Rockies are, in effect, shrinking, according to a new analysis of the nation's snowpack over the past 36 years.
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After four consecutive drought years, farmers are hoping and betting their livelihoods that the snowpack along the 0003-mile-long Sierras, from north to south, will accumulate.
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Short and mild winters in many regions over the last two years have caused mountain snowpack to melt too early, preventing it from reaching its full potential.
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As the planet continues to warm, the likelihood of a below-average snowpack — like the amounts we see this year in California and the French Pyrenees — increases.
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Much depends on the resilience of the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which acts as California's largest water storage facility by replenishing depleted rivers and reservoirs after the winter.
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With the shift toward more rain rather than snow, and the earlier melting of the snowpack, water managers need to release water more frequently for flood control.
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The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada — a source of water once winter ends and the dry months settle in — was nearly twice its normal level last week.
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Slowly melting over the dry months from April to October, the snowpack provides a third of the state's water and is sometimes referred to as California's largest reservoir.
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The idea is to clear an area big enough for a good snowpack to form, but small enough for shade to reduce evaporation and extend the melting season.
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In December, a series of winter storms resulted in the Sierras getting blanketed with snow and the snowpack reaching above-average levels for the first time in years.
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One of the explanations for the increase in fires seems to be an earlier melting of the spring snowpack across the Northern Hemisphere, another trend identified by satellites.
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Warmer spring temperatures can also make the snowpack melt faster, which in extreme circumstances can force water managers to dump water out of reservoirs to protect against flooding.
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Generally, however, 2017 is forecasted to be a below-average year for fire activity in the Rocky Mountains owing to a relatively wet winter and deep lingering snowpack.
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Cameras, hair traps and dispensers were placed a minimum of four metres up trees to account for the massive snowpack that would accumulate over the next eight months.
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That's a problem in California where the melting snowpack acts as a giant tap during the spring and summer, refilling reservoirs used for drinking water and crop irrigation.
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The front page of the Aspen Times illustrates the snowpack decline in Colorado's Mountain, with the damaged area representing the level of melted ice due to rising temperatures.
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The snowpack, a central cog in California's nature-defying system of providing water to 40 million people, is ephemeral: A warm April or May could melt it away.
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Now reduced and uncertain snowpack threatens this economy, impacting snowmobile sales and repairs, but also reducing business at motels and restaurants that depend on the snowmobilers in winter.
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Fresh snow cover deposited just ahead of the cold is aggravating the situation, since the bright snowpack reflects incoming sunlight rather than letting it be absorbed by the surface.
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"California enters the snowmelt season with a large snowpack that will result in high water in many rivers through the spring," State Climatologist Michael Anderson said in a statement.
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Wetter weather in the northern mountains left the snowpack there at 125 percent of normal, whereas in the drier southern part of the state it was at 96 percent.
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While there certainly was a seasonal downside -- including flooding and concerns that a dam might fail at Lake Oroville -- residents are heartened by the highest snowpack level since 220.
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The huge winter storms in California and out West produced a significant snowpack across the region and increased lake levels, setting the stage for major hydropower generation this year.
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But the US is now in the midst of a long-term decline in its snowpack, which has already fueled floods in the spring and droughts in the summer.
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The big picture: Throughout Nebraska, rivers were breaking record highs with heavy rain on top of significant snowpack, suddenly thawing ground and a surge of snowmelt traveling from upstream.
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Christoph Marty of the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos notes that the snow comes later and melts earlier, and the snowpack is thinning (see chart 2).
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Normally, the snowpack—which feeds rivers and reservoirs as it gradually melts during spring and early summer—provides a third of the water consumed by California's farms and cities.
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California's statewide snowpack is only 83 percent of the March 1 average, a result of moderate precipitation and warm temperatures since October, according to California Department of Water Resources.
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A growing body of research suggests that warming temperatures and loss of snowpack linked to climate change may significantly shrink the range where it's possible to make maple syrup.
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Snowpack is important because, when temperatures dip, it acts as a blanket over the ground that prevents the soil, and the tree roots that reside in it, from freezing.
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There is less snow in the Rockies these days, and researchers forecast that in the coming decades, the wolverines in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming may disappear with the snowpack.
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The report, based on more than 7,000 studies, represents the most extensive look so far at the effects of climate change on oceans, ice sheets, mountain snowpack and permafrost.
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Good news from California: Using NASA data, we compared this year's snowpack in the Sierra Nevada with that of 2015, when the state was in the grip of drought.
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The snowpack is key to the complex system of streams, dams and reservoirs that the most populous U.S. state relies on for water in the dry spring and summer months.
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The snowpack supplies about 30 percent of the state's water needs and melts in the spring and sustains the state during the summer when there's typically little to no rainfall.
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The heavy rain and melting snowpack threatened to undermine a spillway at one of the largest dams in the country, which prompted the evacuation of 188,000 residents earlier this week.
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For example, for a start date of 1955, the model found an about 20% decline in snowpack; but for a 1940s start date, there was a decline of about 30%.
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As the storm spins northeastward, it's predicted to bring heavy rain on top of a deep snowpack in the Upper Midwest, with the potential for severe flooding in some areas.
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The recent storms have gotten California's snowpack up to slightly above average for this time of year, but it's going to take a lot more than that to refill reservoirs.
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But when it comes to those who warn people about the extreme weather that caused the fires—blistering temperatures, nonexistent snowpack—climate change has largely been scrubbed from the script.
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According to Rippey, there's likely to be a gradual increase in flood advisories over the next week as the sun continues to beat down on the snowpack in the mountains.
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But the snowpack is expected to shrink more than 20073% by the turn of the century if global warming continues at its current pace, they said in a 22007 report.
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Adding to the problem, mountain snowpack that used to keep forests moist has been in decline in some Western ranges and melts earlier than it did during the previous century.
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Despite last week's snowstorm, which he said effectively doubled the amount of available water stored in the snowpack, the low yearly precipitation could have secondary ecological impacts and wildfire risks.
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Whereas the air temperature in Antarctica routinely drops below -20 degrees Celsius, the temperature beneath the soil and snowpack, where midge larvae live, is just a few degrees below zero.
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On Friday, as the storm was pushing through Southern California, the snowpack in the Sierra over all was 174 percent of normal, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
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Very good news for California: A wet winter has blanketed the ridges of the Sierra Nevada range with a remarkably thick snowpack, which is beyond welcome after years of drought.
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Although avalanche accidents — and deaths — occur almost every season in the North American backcountry, they are uncommon inside resort areas where trained ski patrols carefully monitor and manage the snowpack.
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People living near the Columbia River and upper Missouri River Basin aren't off the hook, either, where minor flooding is possible thanks to the heavy snowpack that built up this winter.
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Increased snowpack in the Rocky Mountains has led to downstream flooding in the past few months, and has contributed to deceptively strong currents in the Rio Grande River straddling the border.
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The snowpack on the Sierra Nevada (a crucial water supply for the long, dry summer) is almost double its normal depth, and near-empty reservoirs are filling fast to the brim.
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Top Image: California's Mount Shasta slowly replensihng its snowpack / NASA Earth Observatory Middle Image: Current U.S. drought levels / Drought Monitor / UNL Bottom Image: California current drought / Drought Monitor / UNLOpen kinja-labs.com
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Right now, forest researchers say the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains looks abundant, meaning that there will likely be plenty of water to go around during the spring and summer.
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The death of trees has been attributed to three factors: a spike in bark beetle infestation, "a record low mountain snowpack and warm temperatures," and five consecutive years of severe drought.
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The sites also collect data that has been largely neglected, but which is essential to anticipating the kind of flooding precipitated by the 2011 storms: soil moisture and temperature, radiation, snowpack.
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Melting conditions in early February shrank the snowpack, but left the ground saturated and prone to floodwater running across fields if there is further rain or snow, the Manitoba government said.
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She said the lack of practice led to a crash, which highlights how climate change has contributed to the reduction of snowpack and affected the safety and future of winter sports.
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Fueled by rapidly melting snowpack and a forecast of more rainstorms in the next few weeks, federal officials warn that 200 million people in 25 states face a risk through May.
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Some are already being felt, like the severe heat this summer and recent episodes of extremely low snowpack in the mountains, which the state depends on for much of its water.
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Frank Gehrke, the state's chief snow surveyor, said he was encouraged by rounds of rain and snowfall now sweeping the state that are helping to shore up reservoirs and the snowpack.
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The Natural Resources Defense Council estimated in 2012 that winter tourism in the US was a $12.2 billion industry, but it has been feeling the economic effects of a shrinking snowpack.
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The drought had reduced Folsom Lake, a major reservoir in Northern California, to less than a third of its capacity in 2015, and all but wiped out the Sierra Nevada snowpack.
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Researchers will use the information Hedrick collected to validate new ways to measure snow and calculate the density of the snowpack—which, together with its depth, indicates how much water it contains.
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Los Angeles is already rethinking its water future, in response to pressures ranging from predictions of a declining Sierra Nevada snowpack to growing competition for Colorado River water, another major city source.
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Mike Kochasic, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sacramento, says by this weekend the snowpack in the northern and central Sierra will be somewhere between half and two-thirds of normal.
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While strong precipitation in parts of California since the fall has lifted hopes after five years of drought, scientists say warming temperatures in the Sierra Nevada has worked to suppress the snowpack.
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Last August, a team led by Russell W. Graham of Pennsylvania State University ruled out all the leading candidates, including human predation, polar bears, increased winter snowpack, volcanic activity and changing vegetation.
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Idaho Power, which serves over 500,000 customers and has 17 hydroelectric power plants, invested more than $3 million dollars in a cloud seeding program to boost the snowpack in Idaho's highest mountains.
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Lake Oroville Dam, located in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, gets major inflows from the Sierras and will be tested again in the spring when the snowpack begins to melt.
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Parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains could get more than a foot of snow, enlarging snowpack that plays a major role in meeting the state's water needs as it melts in the spring.
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And there are multiple indicators, including drought, dieback, shrinkage of the Sierra Nevada's snowpack and a slight retreat of the sequoia's southern range, to suggest such volumes could soon be unavailable to them.
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Taking the drama and intrigue of BiP to the slopes and slaloms of Vermont, the show's creator, Mike Fleiss, is hoping that viewers are ready for situations steamy enough to melt the snowpack.
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The snowpack in California's Sierra Nevada mountains is the largest it's been in 22 years, a positive sign for a region suffering through a years-long drought, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
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The storms also brought snow to the Sierra Nevada mountains, reviving the state's ski industry and leaving a deep snowpack to melt in the spring and summer, providing water during California's dry season.
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Climate change has already made winters warmer and shorter, while a March study by researchers at Oregon State University found North America's snowpack has declined up to 30 percent in the past century.
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And those insights have provided a foundation for decision making, like incorporating trends in temperature, snowpack and runoff into managing the state's crucial groundwater reserves, and the planning and operation of its infrastructure.
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Add to this doomed slurry a little avalanche training (or what used to qualify as avalanche training, and its focus on analyzing snowpack), and people make terrible decisions with greater frequency and confidence.
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He noted that snowpack in the region was 30 percent to 50 percent above normal and that wet snowfall in March added to it, with conditions indicating strong flows in May and June.
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That's good news for the state's snowpack, which supplies about 30 percent of the state's water needs as it melts in the spring and sustains the state through the hot and dry summer months.
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The scientists ran the model with different start dates, as far back as 1915 up to 1975, and a set end year of 2014, and then watched how snowpack levels played out over time.
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Even if the state receives above-average amounts of rain and snow for the next few years, the snowpack will not replenish to its pre-drought levels until 2019, according to a new study.
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However, if the storm is accompanied by colder temps—and the difference of a few degrees could make all the difference—the moisture would fall snow-on-snow, boosting the snowpack back to normal.
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New data from NASA show that this past winter's snowpack levels in California's Tuolumne River Basin, located in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, are higher than they were in the last four years combined.
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On April 1, NASA's Airborne Snow Observatory measured the Tuolumne Basin snowpack at 25 million acre-feet, which NASA says is enough snow to fill the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, nearly 1,600 times.
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"If we get water locked up in the form of snowpack and that stays through the spring, we get a gradual water flow into the spring months and maybe into the summer," he said.
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But after the deepest snowpack in over two decades, topped off by a "bomb cyclone" spring storm in the Rockies, the raging, snowmelt-fed river has been shut to recreation in two Colorado counties.
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With such a huge snowpack and already full reservoirs, there is now an increased risk of flooding if the snowmelt occurs too quickly, such as if any storms without much cold air hit during April.
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"Warmer spring and summer temperatures, reduced snowpack, and earlier spring snowmelt create longer and more intense dry seasons that increase moisture stress on vegetation and make forests more susceptible to severe wildfire," CAL FIRE said.
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Or that cities like Denver, according to KWGN Pinpoint Meteorologist Matt Makens (who tracked a downward trend in Colorado snowpack over a 30 year period) is having one of the least snowy years ever recorded.
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But thinning the forest by letting small fires run their course would increase snowpack because more of the snow would reach the ground, and less of the water would be taken up by the trees.
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Though melting snowpack from the Catskills and reliable rainfall often provide more than enough water for the region, the competing priorities of a thirsty metropolis and the needs of four states raise the stakes considerably.
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If the Amazon were completely deforested, rainfall in Texas would drop by 25%, the Sierra Nevada snowpack would get cut in half, and the coastal northwest would see a reduction in precipitation up to 20%.
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Some hope that means he will focus on the effects of shifting temperatures, which have altered and stressed everything from the crucial Rocky Mountain snowpack to the habitat of a rabbitlike mammal called the pika.
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To that end, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti declared a state of emergency over concerns of flooding homes and damage to the Los Angeles aqueduct as the snowpack in the eastern Sierra Nevada begins to runoff.
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"Statewide average snowpack (snow water equivalent) is almost twice normal for late January, and somewhat more than twice normal in the southern Sierra Nevada," according to Richard Tinker, a drought expert with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.
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Olson told me that if you allow yourself to feel the gravity of climate science -- the fact that coasts will be submerged, forests burned, snowpack melted -- it's easy to despair so much that you become paralyzed.
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On the other side of the United States, in Oregon, we see record-setting droughts and intensifying wildfires, the loss of the snowpack that sustains our agricultural system, and ocean acidification that threatens our seafood industry.
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Droughts, storms, declining rivers and snowpack, and intense heat — events that were worsened by climate change — have cost billions of dollars in damages and taken thousands of lives across the United States over the past year.
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Nearby, amid car-size granite boulders and close to a soaring Ponderosa pine, were instruments that he and his fellow researchers use to obtain detailed information about the snowpack in several spots throughout the southern Sierra.
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Last week's storm nearly doubled the snowpack — and although that brought it up to only 34 percent of what's typically desired by April 1, it has eased comparisons to the record lows in 1977 and 2015.
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And not just more wildfires, but also rising oceans that could erode between a third and two-thirds of Southern California's shoreline, many more heat-related fatalities, billions of dollars in damages and a diminished snowpack.
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The scientists fly over the Sierra range in a specially equipped turboprop plane — monthly in winter, and weekly in spring — where they collect snowpack data using an imaging spectrometer and a laser system known as lidar.
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The snowpack began to melt the weekend of March 9 and 10, leading to widespread snowmelt of two to three inches in many places and four inches in isolated spots, according to the National Weather Service.
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With snowpack this year down by a third, threatening drought, the Colorado suits also allege that oil companies are responsible in part for harm brought to the local agriculture sector and to the area's ski industry.
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What's next: The big concern after this storm departs will be the snowmelt from whatever snowpack it deposits, as well as any rain water runoff that could send already high rivers and streams back over their banks.
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National Briefing | West A three-week winter dry spell left the California snowpack at just 83 percent of average, snow surveyors found Tuesday, a setback for the state as it tries to break out of record drought.
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Written by more than 299 international experts and based on more than 7,000 studies, the report is the most extensive look to date at the effects of climate change on oceans, ice sheets, mountain snowpack and permafrost.
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The storms have dumped more than 7 inches of rain since Monday and the National Weather Service says 6-12 feet of snow has fallen in the Sierra Nevada, where the snowpack is critical to California's water supply.
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Such severe cold so early in the season would be rare, and is typically only seen when a solid snowpack is in place to allow for more of the sun's heat to be reflected back out into space.
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Los Angeles before the storm (AP Photo / Richard Vogel)Don't be too quick to thank El Niño for the last wave of storms that blessed the West Coast with swamped reservoirs, replenished snowpack, and spectacular flaming palm trees.
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The storm has dumped heavy rain on top of a deep snowpack across the Midwest and Upper Midwest, leading to a threat of severe river flooding, ice jams and roof collapses from the weight of water-laden snow.
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"Above-normal snowpack and mild temperatures are melting snow that is causing snowmelt-fed streams, creeks and rivers to rise," the NWS said Friday in a hydrologic outlook for northeastern parts of the state such as Modoc County.
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David Murillo, a regional director at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, welcomed the strong Sierra Nevada snowpack at the start of winter and the parade of El Nino storms that doused California following four years of historic drought.
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The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said this month that there is a moderate to major risk of flooding from northeast North Dakota to northwest Minnesota, where the region's wettest soils and deepest snowpack conditions are found.
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Warm winters and light snowpack have beleaguered the race in recent years, and although the Alaskan winter has been warmer than average this season, snow conditions were tolerable—meaning that mushers were spared long traverses over barren ground.
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Andrew B. Reinmann, an ecologist at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, along with colleagues at Boston University and the United States Department of Agriculture, looked at what happens to trees when snowpack declines.
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Written by more than 235 international experts and based on more than 28,21964 studies, the report represents the most extensive look to date at the effects of climate change on oceans, ice sheets, mountain snowpack and permafrost. 21959.
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Written by more than 235 international experts and based on more than 28,21964 studies, the report represents the most extensive look to date at the effects of climate change on oceans, ice sheets, mountain snowpack and permafrost. 21959.
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"California typically receives the majority of precipitation in December, January and February, and these storms have continued to add to our precipitation levels and increased the state's snowpack," California Department of Water Resource spokesman Chris Orrock told CNN.
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For example, scientists with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) argued that wolverines, a snow-dependent mammal in the weasel family, deserved to be listed as rising temperatures would hurt their ability to den in the snowpack.
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Even so, the dry, warm weather that has persisted since late fall is taking a toll, with snowpack in the Sierra Nevada — the source of about one-third of California's water — at 21 percent of normal on Monday.
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The goal is to make the oil majors liable for the greenhouse gases produced from their products and the local damages of climate change: rising average temperatures, melting snowpack, extreme weather like rainstorms and drought, and higher seas.
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But storms powered by the El Nino ocean-warming phenomenon dumped considerable precipitation in Northern California and much of the Sierra Nevada, swelling reservoirs, building crucial snowpack in the mountains and prompting consumers to complain that cutbacks were unnecessary.
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There is a growing awareness that the depth and water content of the snowpack on the Sierra Nevada mountains, as important as such measurements are, do not alone define the severity of a drought, nor the likelihood of recovery.
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One of Bocherens and his colleagues' suggestions was a rain-on-snow event — during which an impenetrable layer of ice freezes on top of the snowpack — that prevented the mammoths from grazing on the vegetation they needed to survive.
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And the future will bring worse, according to a state report, with erosion and flooding on the coast and reduced snowpack in the east — which will threaten water supplies, warm streams and negatively impact fish like salmon and trout.
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"We happen to be a county with flood warnings now because of a significant amount of snowpack that's coming off the Sierra Nevada," said Ryan Jacobsen, CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau and a grower of wine grapes.
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"Warmer spring and summer temperatures, reduced snowpack, and earlier spring snowmelt create longer and more intense dry seasons that increase moisture stress on vegetation and make forests more susceptible to severe wildfire," CalFire said in its 2019 fire season outlook.
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It will take a lot more than this to get things right: the state's reservoirs are essentially starting from zero and even with the past week's healthy dumping of mountain snow, California's snowpack is still at just 97 percent of normal.
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WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Asylum seekers crossing in the dead of night into Canada from the United States may face a new danger in coming weeks, as heavy snowpack melts in the flood-prone U.S. northern plains and province of Manitoba.
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Torrential showers over hundreds of square miles of melting snowpack produced record volumes of runoff that poured into the Missouri just above the Gavins Point Dam where the river divides Nebraska from South Dakota, nearly 400 miles upstream from Kansas City.
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The healthy snowpack — which will provide about one-third of the state's water as it melts this spring — and successful efforts to sharply reduce water use gave officials enough confidence to suspend the restrictions that had been imposed last April.
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"We'll be getting more rain and less snow here," said Roger C. Bales, a professor at the University of California, Merced, and a principal investigator with the Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory, which studies snowpack and other water-related issues.
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California voters apparently will swallow any story and subsequently have agreed to over $85033 billion more in water "conservation" projects that may never happen and are not needed — this year, California is looking at record rainfall, record snowpack, and record water.
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Recent snow and rain have begun to replenish the state's depleted reservoirs and mountain snowpack, but the drought is far from over, and Brown continues to enforce the state's first-ever mandatory conservation rules for residents and businesses in urban areas.
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Some of the biggest effects of the smaller winter ice cap and lighter snowpack will emerge later this year as the summer heat pushes polar ice back even further, amplifying the ongoing effects of rising average temperatures around the world.
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The report, which was written by more than 22 international experts and is based on more than 217,200 studies, represents the most extensive look to date at the effects of climate change on oceans, ice sheets, mountain snowpack and permafrost.
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"There has been an assumption that the main thing we have to contend with climate change is increased temperatures, decreased snowpack, increased wildfire risk" on the West Coast, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Wolverines use snow to make their natal dens — as well as to cache food and hide from predators — but few specifics are known about how wolverines choose such sites, or how the changing spring snowpack could affect them or their newborn kits.
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Regardless, such heavy snows will not only be a boon for previously parched ski resorts, such as Squaw Valley and Northstar, but will also mean good news for water resource managers who keep close tabs on the liquid water content in the snowpack.
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This El Nino has been one of the strongest on record, but it has so far not been enough to completely alleviate the effects of drought and declining snowpack, and it seems to be making flooding worse across the coastal United States.
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Despite the better news this year, there are plenty of worrying signs about the Sierra snowpack, which provides about 2100 percent of the water Californians use after it melts and flows into rivers and reservoirs, according to the state Department of Water Resources.
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"Most of the state's precipitation and snowpack are far above average, boding well for this water year," Jay Lund, the director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, wrote in a blog post about the changing conditions.
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A storm associated with the push of Arctic air deposited a fresh snowpack across the Great Lakes region on Monday, and this increases the chances of record cold readings since snow-covered ground is more efficient at reflecting solar radiation back into the atmosphere.
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" The new regulations also specify that certain threats that result from climate change, like "melting glaciers, sea level rise, or reduced snowpack but no other habitat-based threats" might "not be prudent because it would not serve its intended function to conserve the species.
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Most states have seen a trend of more winter rain than snow over the last 65 years The biggest concern about warm winter precipitation is that it can bring about a disastrous phenomenon called "rain on snow" where rain falls on previously accumulated snowpack.
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The storms have brought some sorely needed replenishment to many reservoirs left low by five years of drought, while restoring California's mountain snowpack to 135 percent of its average water-content level for this time of year as of Tuesday, state water officials said.
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"Right now, 2020 is on track to be a below-average year but we could still see large storms in March and April that will improve the current snowpack," said Sean de Guzman, chief of water supply forecasting to the California Department of Water Resources.
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With rain continuing to fall following a deluge that brought 20 inches (50 cm) of precipitation to some areas this week, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains - crucial for storing water needed in the state's long, hot summers - is deeper and wetter than normal.
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Before the modern era allowed food to be transported long distances, mountainous countries and countries situated in flood plains typically had chronic iodine deficiency because melting snowpack and floodwaters tend to wash iodine out of the soil and local plants and animals had little iodine.
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His forecast for the runoff this year into Lake Powell, the reservoir at the junction of the upper and lower basins, is the seventh-lowest in history, with expectations that the reservoir will receive less than half of its usual supply from melting snowpack.
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The snowpack, which the state counts on to melt in the spring to fill reservoirs and streams, hit normal levels for the first time in three years last month and has held fast throughout January, according to electronic measurements by the California Department of Water Resources.
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The snowpack level has raised hopes that a wet winter, fueled in part by the weather and oceanic pattern El Nino, will make a dent in California's four-year-old drought, which has parched the most populous U.S. state and cost billions to its agricultural sector.
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Red Dead games tend to view nature as a useful backdrop for some comments-section libertarianism, but when I play Red Dead 2 the real source of suspense and dramatic tension is in that clear air, the nights lit by starlight, and the snowpack in the mountains.
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A fresh snowpack, courtesy of a storm moving through the region earlier in the week, will enhance the potential for record cold readings, as snow-covered ground is more efficient at reflecting solar radiation back into the atmosphere during the day and keeping it colder at night.
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SCIENCE TIMES An article on Tuesday about the effects of climate change on California's mountain snowpack paraphrased incorrectly from comments by Mohammad Safeeq, a researcher at the University of California, Merced, about the density of trees in the Sierra Nevada now compared with a century ago.
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Climate models show that the Amazon's moisture affects rainfall as far away as the US. If the Amazon were completely deforested, that would cut Texas rainfall by 25%, cut the Sierra Nevada snowpack in half, and reduce precipitation by up to 20% in the US coastal northwest.
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We have a water delivery system that was brilliantly designed and constructed decades ago to withstand five consecutive years of extreme drought, but when the state is blessed with rainfall and snowpack, as we were this year, the system still can't even provide water to communities.
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In April 2015, when the state's snowpack hit its lowest since 1950 at 5 percent of its historic average, Brown stood on a dry mountain that was normally blanketed in snow at that time of year and ordered urban areas to reduce water use by 25 percent.
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"Moderate to major and historic river flooding is expected to continue across parts of the Mississippi and Missouri River Basins through the weekend as a result of heavy rainfall earlier this week falling on frozen ground and a deep snowpack leading to intense and quick melting," forecasters said.
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An interesting trend in California that is a harbinger of the difficulties the state may face in the future is that the snowpack numbers have been consistently lagging behind precipitation, Swain says, which is an indication of the influence of above average temperatures during and in between precipitation events.
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Much of the heavy rainfall in recent weeks has soaked into the landscape left parched by four years of drought, and the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada has grown but hasn't started to melt off and replenish the critically low reservoirs, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Shane Hunt said.
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A state water official manually measured the snowpack at one location Thursday morning, and found only 19993 inches of snow on the ground; that snow had 2.6 inches of water content in it, which officials say is just 14 percent of what is considered average for early February.
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"Although the focus of the bomb cyclone was clearly on the blizzard side, the area east of the low picked up significantly heavy rains on top of existing snowpack and frozen ground that was unable to absorb any of the rain and water runoff," CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said.
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"We aren't going to solve large climate shifts in areas, but if you went back and you looked in California and said if we had an additional 3003%, 15%, 20% of snowpack and precipitation over the last 10 years ... it would be significantly different," said Neil Brackin, president of Weather Modification.
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The National Park Service finally banned the practice in 1968, and a few years later, people noticed that a waterfall on the eastern side of El Capitan created the same fiery effect for a few weeks in February, when the winter light hit the font of melting snowpack just right.
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A slab can detach from the stable snowpack beneath it and career downhill like a runaway tectonic plate that transforms, within milliseconds, into a many-ton, half-frozen wave, subsuming whatever is in front of or on top of it, before instantaneously seizing, when it settles, into a substance resembling cement.
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The study notes — but does not include — the effects of other phenomena that may be associated with human-caused climate change, such as more frequent lightning strikes, the growth and spread of beetle populations that kill Western pines as a result of climate change, and the reduced snowpack in Western mountain ranges.
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That points to high risks of wildfire for the Southwest and the lower elevations of California, where dry and windy stretches are likely to raise the odds of a big blaze, and in south-central Alaska, where a reduced mountain snowpack and an early warmup are raising the odds of a big fire.
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Climate scientist Amy Snover directs the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, a research group that studies how climate affects communities in the northwest and western US. Its research shows that the changes we have begun to see in recent years — drought, wildfires, and reduced snowpack — are only projected to get worse.
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As the associate director for the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, Dello spent that year disseminating climate information to the public as historically warm weather melted mountain snowpack and dried out landscapes across the Pacific Northwest, triggering water scarcity, fueling historic wildfires, and offering a glimpse of what soon could be the new normal.
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Ryan opened a snowpack PowerPoint while we took notes about storm slabs and wind slabs and persistent slabs, all of which sounded like subcategorical psychiatric disorders from the D.S.M. When Ryan shifted the conversation to "avalanche problems," we perked up, maybe because the term would seem provocatively redundant, the avalanche itself being the primary problem.
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As the new photos show, the damage is quite serious, and concerns remain about the integrity of facility given that there are still five more weeks to go in California's rainy season—not to mention the billions of gallons of water that will rush to the reservoir once the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada starts to melt.
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"High temperature extremes, heavy precipitation events, high tide flooding events along the US coastline, ocean acidification and warming, and forest fires in the western United States and Alaska are all projected to continue to increase, while land and sea ice cover, snowpack, and surface soil moisture are expected to continue to decline in the coming decades," the authors wrote.
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