Don’t Count La Nina Out Just Yet

Snowpack may be looking just dandy here in the Southwest for a La Nina winter, but Klaus Wolter’s latest experimental forecast suggests it would be unwise for us to get all cocky about our decisions to buy those full-season ski passes: My experimental forecast guidance for the late winter season (January-March 2008) continues to show …

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Writing About Lee’s Ferry

Lee’s Ferry, on the Colorado Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Sitting at home working on a chilly Saturday, this photo from a trip in 2005 reminds me that I’d rather be at Lee’s Ferry than sitting home writing about it. But it’s a pretty interesting place, so writing about Lee’s Ferry is a good close second. …

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On Voluntary Conservation

From North Carolina, word that residents are not really all that altruistic and require some sort of pricing structure to help them understand that they’re in a frickin’ drought: Less than two months ago, Gov. Mike Easley urged all North Carolina communities to reduce water consumption by 50 percent. After showing marked declines in the …

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Powell party, 1871

I recently discovered the USGS’s wonderful photo archive, which (among many other things) has a huge collection of the photography from the second John Wesley Powell survey of the Grand Canyon. Powell quote of the day: Many droughts will occur. Many seasons in a long series will be fruitless.

Is India’s Monsoon Declining?

From K. V. Ramesh and P. Goswami last week in Geophysical Research Letters, evidence that India’s monsoon, bringer of the rains to feed the farmers who feed the residents of one of the world’s largest nations, may be in decline: We show here, based on an analysis of daily gridded observed rainfall data for the …

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Dave Finds The Solution Space

Regular Inkstain readers will no doubt be aware of my ongoing search for “the solution space” – public policy options that unite those with disparate views in search of solutions to thorny problems that can actually be implemented – that are robust to underlying political disagreements. My friend Dave is pushing something in this regard …

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The Christmas Tree Thing

I’m unclear on antipodal Christmas rituals, but apparently this is another area the Australian drought is being felt: With the Christmas tree season beginning this weekend, growers reported their crops would be up to 75 per cent smaller than previous years because of dry conditions last year. But decent rains this year have been good …

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