Snow was sparse through the middle of February. Things picked up for about a month, and now we are limping along once again.
The Alta Snowfall History shows a cumulative seasonal snowfall of only 321 inches with 8 deep-powder days (based on a minimum of 10 inches or more of snow). The latter is about half of average. Five of those deep powder days occurred from Feb 15 to March 17, which now stands as the closest thing to a month of winter that we saw this year.
It's possible that we have more dumps in the future. April can do sometimes bring the goods. Nevertheless, even if it comes around, I feel a bit cheated by winter this year.
There's always next season...
...or will there be? I guess it's up to the experts in the field of climatology to possibly have a news conference or some other sort of localized response to climate change...how about some kind of "this is how the Salt Lake Valley will look in the future based on climate change—and you can forget about skiing" to wake people up? Sorry to comment critically, but I don't see any local climate experts putting any skin into the Global Warming issue. Could you and your peers please help influence the situation? I guess I expect the best and the brightest academic minds to lead somewhat.
ReplyDelete"I don't see any local climate experts putting any skin into the Global Warming issue."
DeleteThis argument has no basis and even if it did, what would you have us do? The stasis on this issue has nothing to do with climate science and everything to do with values.
Jim
Good reply to an asinine comment.
DeleteSadly, we live in a world where the objectivity of scientific discovery in the field of Climate Science has been politicized.
ReplyDeleteYes, NOW! is the time to PRAY FOR MORE SNOW and LESS WIND for next year.
ReplyDeleteApril (and May) can do is always a nice way to transition to summer, I'm already dreading July and innumerable overnight lows above 70, God help us 75.
Another winter without snow as you often say, or we did not have a Steenburgh Winter this year. On the positive side for next year, as you mentioned, your Fulbright taking you to Austria hopefully portends a massive Steenburgh Effect where the Wasatch does better than the blessed 2010/11 season. Prayer.
As to the anonymous comment on lack of skin into global warming, I'd add to your response that you have had numerous posts over these way to many years of woefully inadequate snowfall where you note this is what our future looks like as the planet warms.
My own view is we are in a drought cycle, perhaps enhanced as you noted in a post earlier this year by climate change, and we will still have cold and snowy winters. If I wanted to be a total buzzkill, I could get into long drought cycles, like 100 years, the type that lead to the Anasazi demise. But let's not go there.
Instead, let's PRAY FOR MORE SNOW and LESS WIND for next year.
Some comments on this in today's post.
DeleteIndeed, the Steenburgh effect provides great hope for next winter!
It is interesting that down in the valley at SLC airport the snowfall has been 42 inches (about 70% of normal) which does not look that bad. Many past seasons had much less snowfall at KSLC for example only 15 inches in 2014/2015.
ReplyDeletelink: https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/climate/yeardisp.php?wfo=slc&stn=KSLC&span=Water+Year&submit=Water