Arizona Snowpack Statewide "Off The Bottom Of The Charts"

[hatrack]

PHOENIX (AP) -- Arizona's driest winter in at least 65 years is causing alarm among scientists and government agencies, who say it has no precedent. Twenty-nine of 34 snow measuring sites monitored by the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service had no snow -- the barest the survey sites have been going back to the earliest records in the late 1930s.

"Arizona is off the bottom of the charts," said Tom Pagano, a hydrologist for the service in Portland, Ore. "This year is unlike anything we've ever seen before." A survey team scouting for snow this week in the San Francisco Peaks outside Flagstaff found just 4 inches where there should have been more than 50.

Snowpack is critical for Arizona's water supplies, feeding the streams and reservoirs that supply Phoenix, Flagstaff and dozens of other communities. "We were all thinking that 2002 had been a once-in-a-lifetime event, that it would never happen again," Pagano said of what was thought of as the driest year ever. "So far, this year is worse than 2002."

Friday marked the 136th consecutive day without rain at Sky Harbor International Airport.

EDIT

http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2006/03/05/news/regional/ea1367d8110dc6b98725712600618201.txt

[Drum]

1. Also, don't the conditions of "La Nina" contribute th this? nt

[hatrack]

2. Yeah, Ninas tend to cut snow/rainfall totals in the West & Southwest

This is shaping up to be one nasty summer out there.

[4dsc]

3. SO how much water is left??

I seem to remember that Phoenix and its neighbors had about a 2 year supply of water but I'm sure this drought isn't helping matters..

[phantom power]

13. in 2004, reservoirs were very low. Last spring we got a reprieve,

but even after last year a lot of reservoirs were by no means full. This year will be bad. If Napolitano doesn't take some kind of steps toward water rationing, I think she's a fool.

[sam sarrha]

4. mass Migration out of AZ ahead when the taps quit flowing ..??

[Spinzonner]

9. If we had our National Guard, we could stop them at the CA/AZ border

:sarcasm:

[NNadir]

5. My, there are a lot of "once in a lifetime events" lately.

The occurrence of this many "once in a lifetime" events is a once in a lifetime event.

[donsu]

6. and they will continue and get worse

saw an article yesterday wondering if another and worse dust bowl is coming out west.

[NNadir]

8. Well they did have some "once in a lifetime" fires there this winter.

[pscot]

10. Think "Chaco Canyon"

Desert settlments have always been problematic, at best. The developement of Arizona has always struck me as being particularly feckless. You don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.

[depakid]

14. Periodic drought cycles and poor land use practices

led to the collapse of several complex precolumbian Southwestern societies. The trouble with marginal areas like Arizona and New Mexico is that the periods are generations long- generally beyond living memory, so it's impossible to plan for the inevitable "downturns" even if you wanted to.

Not that the land developers (or those in government beholder to their interests) would ever want to- or allow anyone to stop their insanity. In that respect, modern inhabitants don't even have the sense that the Chacoans had.

[Sal316]

7. The last 'nor'easter' that blew through NY

...dumped more snow in Central Park in one day (26") than Snowbowl Ski Resort has had all winter (21").

We've already had the first couple of wildfires, the "February Fire" near Payson burned more than it should have because they couldn't get any water to it... the pipes and resevoirs were still frozen.

The good news is that there won't be a bunch of spring vegetation to dry out and burst into flames this summer.

The bad news is that there won't be much relief in the form of rain until late July/early August.

We're almost out of our 'wet season' and any realistic rain won't come till the end of summer, when the monsoons hit. They're saying maybe Wed/Thurs this week, but it's so dry here, the rain doesn't reach the ground.




*edited to put the right 'through' in the title.*

[megatherium]

11. As I recall, the climate history of the southwest is less than comforting.

I recall that there have been 400 year long periods where the average precipitation was one-third of what the southwest has received in the last few decades. And this is before global warming.

I have friends in the southwest. I visited AZ a couple of years ago, and I was very impressed at the size of the cities (Phoenix in particular) that exist, suspended in ecological mid-air, as it were, in the middle of a harsh desert.

[phantom power]

12. Yeah, we all moved down here during the wettest 30 years on record.

Smooth move on our part. But we'll have water for ever and ever. Because we have technology, dudes.