Letters to the Editor
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Excuse me Andrew but it's too early to say we have decreasing snowmelt
But at the same time, California is experiencing decreasing snowmelt, longer summers and a gradual rise in temperatures, which are putting other regions in the state at risk.
Last ski season royally sucked, I agree. We have less snowmelt this year, that is for sure. As for a pattern of decreasing snowmelt, I think you'll find this is not yet born out by the snowfall history charts posted at mammothmountain.com.
The season before last had record snowfall. Mammoth was open for skiing until July 4, and Tioga Pass wasn't cleared until late June.
There was so much snow the year before last, they had a huge slab avalanche on Climax -- on a patrolled slope, after avalanche control, in the middle of the day.
I was there that day. I got to work the probe line. No casualties, luckily. The missing snowboarders turned up in the cocktail lounge, drinking Jagermeisters and watching ESPN while all the patrol and volunteers busted their behinds probing the avalanche debris for their dead bodies.
That was one hell of a year.
Now according to to that guy at JPL -- the one who was dead wrong about the previous two years but right about last year -- we're heading for ten years of drought in the West.
If that's true than we WILL see a pattern of decreasing snowmelt.
But we don't know that he's right, because he said we wouldn't have any snow in 2005-2006 and instead we had the most snow ever, since they started recording.
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An addendum to decreasing snowmelt
I just looked at Mammoth snowfall records. They're have 9" so far this October, and the month is not over. Last year they only had 4 inches by Halloween. The year before last, the record year, they got seven inches.
If it were valid to extrapolate the whole season from October, then it would look like we're heading for another big snow year.
However, it's not valid to make that extrapolation, so we just have to wait and see if this "pattern of decreasing snowmelt" actually turns out to be a pattern and not just another fluctuation.
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@Serai1, try checking with some skiers
The river that brings water to just about the all of Southern California is now drying up because of reducing snowmelt and increasing population demands all along its length.
As far as I've heard, the skiing in the Rockies and Utah has been good the past few years.
There certainly are increased population demands but I'd check the last ten years of ski reports if I were you before talking about decreasing snowmelt.
The year before last was the biggest snow year ever recorded in the Sierra Nevada. And last year was hardly the worst.
The worst snow years happened back in the late seventies. That was a very bad drought. The skiers were pretty unhappy, and there was water rationing as well.
It's not obvious that global warming has to result in less snowfall. It could make the winter weather more erratic, which would mean in some years we'd get more snow than we knew what to do with.
That's what happened in 2005-2006. There was more snow than people knew what to do with. It just kept coming and coming and coming.
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brightbaloney65
The whole solar system is heating up due to sun activity.
Um, no. That is a right wing talking point. Funny how hundreds of thousands of years of ice core samples on Earth are worthless, but a few years on partial data from surface pictures on Mars is proof that the Sun is what's causing global warming. Riiiiiight.
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@murlaska
re: "living downtown"
Oh please. Can hipster liberals please stop trotting out this canard that if everyone would just live downtown/drive a hybrid/buy local food then our problems would be solved?
Living downtown is great if there's a downtown to live in that's safe, affordable, and available. Unfortunately this is simply not the case in many US cities. I live near Baltimore which affords me the possibility of expensive living in one of the most dangerous cities in the country. But at least I wouldn't have to worry about fires!
For the record I consider myself a liberal, but this idea that city living would (or could) solve all the problems is ridiculous. There's no single answer.
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Fire risk is a land use issue
The speculative and inrementaal contribution to the wildfires is dwarfed by the far more important cause: poor land use.
It makes no sense to build in hazardous locations.
In the rush to make the global warming case, environmentalists and the press are missing the real cause, and the real story.
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Cry out Facts, but not so far as to Cry Wolf
I am someone who believes there is a very strong possibility that Man is causing the earth to warm, and think that greater fires, greater hurricanes, greater droughts and lesser winters are most likely going to be the norm in the future.
But I also believe that environmentalists have to be careful to not be seen as untethered from reality and lose legitimacy as did certain prominent preachers who, twenty years ago, preached that the increase of deadly world-wide earthquakes were a sure sign of the apocalypse.
Basically environmentalists must always ensure they have their science and facts as strait as possible - unlike the preachers who didn't mention that the increase in deadly earthquakes were more logically attributed to (physically) a greater population living in earthquake prone areas and (emotionally) immediate viewing of the devastation on television instead of reading accounts in the paper days later.
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Even big snow years spring is warmer than normal
FYI, even in the big snow years of 2005 and 2006 spring was warmer than normal. Still, rather focus on what is happening east of crest, look at the west slope of the southern Sierra or the San Gabriel Mountains for snowpack data.
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re: Amazing posts here
Reality-based Liberal,
"No one said this fire was caused by global warming. But higher average temperatures mean that low-water areas like SoCal will get less water and high-water areas will get more (warm air sucks up more moisture drying out dry places and has to dump it somewhere)."
Ah but Senator Harry Reid DID say that global warming caused it...or more specifically, was one of the reasons it occurred.
BTW, I heard they found a arsonist...can anyone confirm that?