Upper Colorado River Basin Flows Projected Best In A Decade
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 02.11.08
Ever notice how lately nearly all water news feels bad? Flood or drought is what the news generally focuses on. At last some good news for the people who depend on the water of the Colorado River.
A snowy January on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains has water managers crossing their fingers for something they haven't seen for a while: a truly wet year on the Colorado River. The latest forecast calls for the river to receive 120 percent of its normal inflow from melting mountain snow. If that prediction comes to pass, 2008 would go down as the best year on the Colorado in more than a decade.'Snow levels were above average by as much as 56 percent in parts of central and western Colorado and, in the high country of Colorado, Utah and Arizona, the snowpack is almost double what it normally is this time of year...'
It's a start at refilling, first, Lake Powell, and then downstream Lake Mead. Wish them well.
Via::Review-Journal, "Snow news good news for Colorado River area, Forecast calls for 120 percent of normal inflow" Image credit:NWS,National Snow Analysis, Snow Water Equivalent Remote Sensing Map - Feb 11, 2008 projection (can be animated).
And up here in Toronto we have not had so much snow in years, it is record-breaking. And all the anti-treehugger types say we never report the good news, only the bad.
Yeah, the "anti-types" are only thinking of melting ice and snow. what they don't realize is that it's climate change! we're gonna see great rainfalls and snowfalls in other places but other places will receive odd weather patterns too.
Interestingly at the begging of winter (Octoberish) all the weather guys at NOAA were predicting one of the driest years because of La Nina. Now it's one of the wettest years and spring flooding is predicted.
Now you can chalk it up to climate chang,e global warming etc.... but... if the weather guys can't predict 2 months in advance (and this is NOAA the lead US agency for climate prediction) why do we think that the models predicting 50-100 years in advance are worth anything?
I like green for sure. Living in Colorado it's hard not too... but let's not allow ourselves to interpret every fact in light of the theory of Climate Change.
While the winter snows are great news for the Colorado River Watershed - they do not begin to make up for the poor snows of previous years. Also the early springs and long summers are causing greater evaporation rates. Thanks to climate change and our growing populations, our Western water supplies are not a certain thing. We may soon go the way of the Anasazi - unless we start working for a more sustainable tomorrow today.