Archive of posts filed under the climate variability category.

New outlook shifts odds slightly toward dry 2016-17 across Colorado River Basin

Posted by on

At the risk of driving faster than is prudent on a twisty mountain road at night, the new 2016-17 climate outlook released yesterday does not look particularly encouraging for the Colorado River Basin: That’s December 2016 – February 2017. Browns mean odds are shifted toward dry. A reminder that the maps can be a little …

Continue reading ‘New outlook shifts odds slightly toward dry 2016-17 across Colorado River Basin’ »

A drying trend forecast for the Southwest

Posted by on

Today’s long lead outlook from the Climate Prediction Center is enough to make a southwestern water manager long a second consecutive busted forecast*. With La Niña in the offing, the maps show creeping brown across the Four Corners states by August and not letting up until late spring of 2017: * Last winter’s forecast, for a …

Continue reading ‘A drying trend forecast for the Southwest’ »

Early melt in the West’s snowpack

Posted by on

April and early May have been extraordinarily warm in parts of the western United States, leading to early snowmelt, according to the USDA’s first-week-of-May snowpack update: During April, Western snowpack dropped at record speed, according to data from the fifth and final 2016 forecast by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. “In …

Continue reading ‘Early melt in the West’s snowpack’ »

One of the driest February-March’s in Albuquerque history

Posted by on

Correction (update?): As of Friday, March 25, 2016, it’s now not likely to rain in March after all. Correction (update?): It might rain after all!   In 1934, the official Albuquerque weather station received 0.04 inches of rain in February and 0.01 in March. This year, we received 0.05 in February. So far, we’ve gotten …

Continue reading ‘One of the driest February-March’s in Albuquerque history’ »

The warm, dry spring pushing Colorado River reservoir forecast levels down

Posted by on

This month’s US Bureau of Reclamation reservoir forecast model runs show the implications of the warm, dry spring, with a drop of 620,000 acre feet and six feet in elevation in the estimated end-of-year storage in Lake Powell, the major reservoir in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Here’s my long term forecast graph, updated with …

Continue reading ‘The warm, dry spring pushing Colorado River reservoir forecast levels down’ »

New evidence that a warming climate is already reducing Colorado River flows

Posted by on

Connie Woodhouse at the University of Arizona and colleagues have a new paper presenting the most direct link yet between a greenhouse-warmed climate and reduced flows in the Colorado River. Modeling has for many years projected such an effect in the future, but the new Woodhouse et al. paper (Increasing influence of air temperature on …

Continue reading ‘New evidence that a warming climate is already reducing Colorado River flows’ »

What does it mean to have “drought” in Yuma?

Posted by on

In my endless puzzling over the meanings we attach to the word “drought”, there is this, from yesterday’s Climate Prediction Center seasonal drought outlook: What does it mean to talk about “drought” in places like Yuma or the Imperial Valley that average less than 4 inches (10 cm) of rain a year, and that get …

Continue reading ‘What does it mean to have “drought” in Yuma?’ »

Awaiting our May miracle in the Colorado River Basin

Posted by on

It was 72F (22C) in Albuquerque yesterday, a record, and our decent snowpack is already starting to melt out. It’s early for that. And February (see PRISM map at right) has been dry, which hasn’t helped. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, snowpack measured across all the river’s main tributary systems above Lake Powell (the …

Continue reading ‘Awaiting our May miracle in the Colorado River Basin’ »