West snowpack collapse

Utah’s mountain snow didn’t just come in low this year. It peaked early, then kept shrinking, and the state’s statewide snowpack topped out at about 8.3 to 8.4 inches of snow water equivalent in early March, the lowest peak since modern daily tracking began in the 1980s. (ksl.com) (water.utah.gov) Snow water equivalent is the amount of liquid water stored inside the snow, and it is the number water managers care about because a deep fluffy snowbank can hold less water than a shorter, denser one. In Utah this year, that water bank account was so thin that the state says the peak arrived on March 9, about three weeks earlier than normal. (water.utah.gov) Nearly every Utah basin got hit. KSL reported that almost a dozen basins peaked below their previous record lows, which means this was not one bad canyon or one dry ridge but a statewide failure to build a normal spring reservoir in the mountains. (ksl.com) Central Oregon saw the same pattern with a different twist: the snowpack there did not just stay low, it melted down fast in March. KTVZ reported historic low snow water equivalent levels in the Deschutes and nearby basins after warm conditions erased snow that should have still been sitting in the Cascades near April 1. (ktvz.com) That is why hikers may see earlier trail access in some places this spring. The same missing snow that opens high-country roads and trailheads sooner also means less slow-release water feeding creeks, reservoirs, and soils in June, July, and August. (ktvz.com) (drought.gov) Across the West, federal drought analysts said by early March that Colorado had record-low statewide snowpack, stations in the Oregon and Washington Cascades had some of the region’s biggest deficits, and parts of California were already melting out early. The pattern is broad enough that it is showing up from local trailheads all the way down to the Colorado River system. (drought.gov) The Colorado River depends on mountain snow the way a checking account depends on direct deposit. When the deposit is small and arrives early, reservoirs downstream get less runoff during the weeks when they usually refill. (reviewjournal.com) That is why forecasters are now talking about Lake Powell in record-book terms. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that hydrologist Cody Moser of the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center said runoff into Lake Powell could finish below 2002, which is the current record low year and the benchmark many water officials use for the start of the modern megadrought era. (reviewjournal.com) Lake Powell matters far beyond northern Arizona and southern Utah because water released from Powell moves to Lake Mead, and Lake Mead supplies Southern Nevada and helps serve Arizona, California, and Mexico under the Colorado River system. A bad snow year in the Rockies can show up months later as tighter water management hundreds of miles away. (reviewjournal.com) On the ground, the first signs of this kind of year are ordinary and easy to miss: smaller streams by early summer, dry campsites that usually have seep water, and fire restrictions that arrive sooner than people expect. Federal drought analysts already list lower summer streamflows, tighter irrigation supplies, and higher wildfire risk among the likely impacts of this year’s snow drought. (drought.gov) Utah says 100 percent of the state is now in some form of drought, and the state has already started discussing emergency responses tied to the low snow year, including water support for the Great Salt Lake. A winter that looked like a ski problem in January is turning into a water problem for the entire summer. (water.utah.gov) (deseret.com)