Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
I hate to start out the New Year with kind of grim news, but it’s sure not looking good out there as far as snow goes. In fact, many parts of the West are experiencing one of their thinnest Jan. 1 snowpacks in the last two decades. And the last two decades, as you probably now, were generally lousy.
A dearth of precipitation is the main problem, of course, but abnormally warm temperatures aren’t helping matters. And remember, “normal” is based on the three decades between 1991 and 2020, which was a heck of a lot warmer than the previous three decades, which in turn was balmier than all the decades before that back to 1901. Seems like something’s going on here, eh? I wonder what?
Take the Great Falls, Montana, area, where the average temperature for the month of December was 37.6 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly 12 degrees above normal. On one day, the high reached a whopping 64 F (a daily record) and the low dropped only to a balmy 51 F, for a daily average that was almost 30 degrees above normal. Meanwhile, the region received just .08 inches of precipitation for the month. Some more stats to ponder:
- 31: Number of monthly high maximum temperature records tied or broken across the West in Dec. 2023.
- 100: Number of monthly high minimum temperature records tied or broken across the West in Dec. 2023, including a 57 degree overnight low in Troutdale, Oregon, on Dec. 5 and 46 degrees in Benchmark, Montana, a whopping 5 degrees higher than the previous record low set in 2020.
- 0: Number of lowest minimum temperature records set across the West during December.
Wyoming seems to be bearing the brunt of the aridification this year. Statewide, the snowpack is now lower than ever recorded for the first of January. Ack.
And check out these stats from the National Weather Service’s Riverton, Wyoming, office:
Colorado is generally dry, as well, especially in the southwestern corner.
And Oregon? Blargh.
The only kind of bright spot seems to be in the Gila River Basin in southern New Mexico, where a good storm brought things up to the median for the period of record:
Here’s hoping El Niño kicks in soon.