Record Low Snow in the West Will Mean Less Water, More Fire, and Political Chaos

""The numbers are really, really bad," Swain says. "If this were November, they might be less meaningful. We're not in November-we're heading toward mid-February. The normal numbers are pretty high. To be at half of them means that, in absolute terms, the deficit is large.""

""Barring a genuinely miraculous turnaround" in the remainder of the winter, says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, the low snowpack "has the potential to worsen both the ecological and political crisis on the Colorado Basin, and then also produce really adverse wildfire conditions in some parts of the West.""

Record-low snowpack is occurring across the Western United States mid-winter, with USDA data on February 12 showing levels below half of normal in areas across nine states. The deficit stretches from southern Washington through Colorado to Arizona and New Mexico, making the shortfall unusually widespread. The Colorado River Basin, which supplies water to 40 million people across seven states, faces heightened ecological and political strain as states struggle to finalize water-sharing agreements. Unusually warm winter temperatures have limited snow accumulation even where precipitation occurred, increasing the likelihood of drier soils and elevated wildfire risk this summer.

Read at WIRED