From The Durango Telegraph (Jonathan Romeo):

Before the holidays, snowpack in Southwest Colorado was hovering well below the historic average for this time of year, heightening concerns the winter was not off to strong start.

Fortunately, a weeklong series of snowstorms between Christmas and New Year’s dumped several feet on the San Juan Mountains, causing snowpack averages to jump from around 80% to more than 140%, according to data from the National Resource Conservation Service.

Unfortunately, these numbers don’t tell the whole story of Colorado’s snowpack. This year, Colorado, as well as the entire West, is basing snowpack averages on updated numbers that reflect the drier years the West has been experiencing because of climate change-driven drought.

True, the updated snowpack averages are important for researchers and hydrologists in their work to better understand current climate conditions. The problem for some, however, is that by continually calling degraded conditions from climate change “normal,” both scientists and the public adjust their sense of normal to a situation that is anything but.

“It mutes the effects of climate change because we’re constantly shifting the baseline to reflect the new normal,” Michael Remke, a lecturer of biology at Fort Lewis College, said. “If we become normalized to it being dry, and then we have a dry year reported as 120% of normal, then people are like, ‘Great, a wet year.’ But the reality is we’re trending in a dry direction.”

[…]

The National Resource Conservation Service calculates “historic averages” of snowpack based on a 30-year period of record (mostly through SNOTEL stations in the high country). These are updated every 10 years to reflect the most current conditions.

For the past 10 years, however, these averages have been based on snowfall recorded from 1981-2010. But as of this October, the data set was updated to include snowpack averages from 1991-2020. Essentially, the data set switched out the 1980s (considered a wet period) to include the 2010s (a very dry period).

The updated numbers make sense for snow researchers and scientists working in related fields, said Joel Atwood, a hydrologist for NRCS’s Colorado Snow Survey. “It’s important to capture changes as we move forward. When you have 30-year intervals, you can capture some of those changes, and the last chunk of 30 years are more comparable to present conditions.”

One of the most important uses for the data is to monitor and predict runoff in the spring – a critical piece of information to gauge how much water may be available for municipalities, agriculture and other uses…

What’s normal?

The problem, some believe, is that the new snowpack averages are shared through social media or the nightly news, and the full context and nuances of the data is not well understood by the public.

For Southwest Colorado, the baselines from 1981-2010 are below the standards now in effect from 1991-2020. This early in the winter, there’s no great disparity between the two for snowpack averages. But that could change come peak season in April, when the snowpack on Red Mountain Pass is an inch below the water-snow equivalent from previous standards. In other areas, the changes are more drastic…

Snowpack isn’t the only data set updated every 10 years. Various agencies, like the USGS and NOAA, also update things like temperature and precipitation norms every decade. But the wrench of the impacts from climate change are increasingly complicating how to interpret and use all this information…

A shifting baseline

This issue is no new phenomena – in fact it has a name: shifting baseline syndrome.

Also known as SBS, it was first coined in 1995 after a scientist studying what would be a sustainable catch level for commercial fishing found each generation of fishery scientists used the current conditions as their baselines, not taking into account the degradation that had occurred from past over-fishing.

“The shifting baseline syndrome is the situation in which, over time, knowledge is lost about the state of the natural world, because people don’t perceive changes that are actually taking place,” Dr. E.J. Milner-Gulland, who authored a paper on SBS, said in 2009. “In this way, people’s perceptions of change are out of kilter with the actual changes taking place in the environment.”

[…]

Skewing reality

The new snowpack averages are a relatively small piece of the puzzle, but it does warp our reference point, Remke said, because the newer data reflects drier years that are now the new standard. “This is an important issue to be aware of,” he said.

The situation grows ever more complicated when taking into account the tools and technology for measuring snowpack (there’s a lot of variability in numbers, methods, etc.). And with only 700 or so SNOTEL sites across the West, mostly installed in the 1980s, data is limited.

But, according a report in Forbes, some climate scientists are urging agencies to stick with a 30-year time period, rather than update the standards every decade and reinforce shifting baselines. And, a report on SBS said it could be combated by environmental restoration, increased data collection, education and quite simply, having more people interact with nature.

All this is important to think about, Burke said: Basing snowpack data on the past 30 years will likely yield more accurate predictions of next year’s snowpack, and may make us feel better about this year’s numbers. But it will also obscure the seriousness of the drought in which we currently find ourselves.

From The Montrose Daily Press (Katharhynn Heidelberg):

Although Montrose finished 2021 a bit below normal for overall precipitation — 7.55 inches compared to the “normal year” average of 8.28 inches — December’s monthly precip, at 0.67 inches, was above the 0.46 inches average usually seen.

“There were two significant events in December that were the lion’s share of that,” National Weather Service meteorologist Lucas Boyer said on Jan. 6.

On Dec. 9, a snowstorm brought 0.22 inches of moisture and on New Year’s Eve came another 0.21 inches…

Last week carried 0.8 inches of precip for Montrose, a shade above the normal of 0.7. One week isn’t sufficient to determine how the whole month might go, but it left Montrose “pretty much even” with where it should be…

The Colorado River District isn’t counting anything as a certainty, but is breathing a little easier because of increased snowpack.

The January 10 SNOTEL data show the Gunnison Basin at 146% of normal snow-water equivalent.

In considering the relatively wet year of 2019, [Zane] Kessler said it would take about 10 such years to truly turn things around.

“That’s not a good bet. We’re not likely to see a solution to the structural deficit anytime soon,” he said.

The last round of storms did, however, help, taking extra-parched basins like the San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan to 134% of average.

From The Denver Post (Conrad Swanson) via The Loveland Reporter-Herald:

The average temperature for the last six months is the hottest recorded in Colorado and the country as a whole, according to data released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The next-highest six-month average temperature peak in Colorado came during the 1930s Dust Bowl era, the data shows.

Colorado, and the rest of the country is unlikely to see an exact repeat of the Dust Bowl because we’re able to manage the land better than during the 1930s, Climatologist Becky Bolinger of Colorado State University said. But there are some similarities in the extreme temperatures, abnormally dry climate and the dust storm that swept from Colorado to the Midwest last month.

“We are currently experiencing climate change,” Bolinger said. “It’s not something that happens in the future. We have it happening now.”

The federal data shows that the average temperature in Colorado between July and December of 2021 reached 53.4 degrees, more than a degree and a half warmer than the same six-month span in 2020.

The next highest six-month average in Colorado came in 1933 at 52.1 degrees, the only other time in the state’s record when that average exceeded 52 degrees, the data shows.

Nationally, the six-month average hit 59.77 degrees last year, more than a full degree higher than during the same period in 2020, the data shows. The next closest peak nationally came in 2015, when the six-month average reached 59.32 degrees. The national July-December average has only exceeded 59 degrees in 1998, 2015, 2016 and last year.

Relatively speaking the average temperature increase, in Colorado and across the country, might appear slight but it makes a large difference, Bolinger said. Higher temperatures lead to more moisture and water lost into dry soils or to evaporation.

Those dry conditions elongate the state’s wildfire season (which many experts now describe as year-round) and increase the amount of fuel that can exacerbate the fires once they start.