Forecast: Less snow for skiers, less water for Calif.
By Kitty Felde, KPCC
Attention skiers: climate change means fewer trips to Tahoe this century. That’s the word from a first-time study by the Department of the Interior. Less snow also means additional challenges for storing water during drier months.
According to the DOI’s Sacramento and San Joaquin Basins Climate Impact Assessment, the average temperature in California’s Central Valley is predicted to rise by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century and possibly more than 5 degrees by the end of the century. It may not sound like much, but it means more rain and less snow in the Sierra.
That snow provides more than recreation for skiers. It’s like a bank account for future water withdrawals. Deputy Interior Secretary Michael Connor says we’ve historically relied on the natural snowpack to melt slowly, providing steady runoff that would provide water for cities and farms into mid-to-late summer. Less snow means less water during California’s hotter, drier months.
Attention Lake Tahoe News, This article full of propaganda and hyperbole may mean less reading of this newspaper for this reader. Less snow will mean less skiers. That’s a revelation! The history of weather in the Sierra has always been feast or famine. 300 year super droughts are possible. Sometimes science is accurate, but proving global warming and it’s impacts on regional precipitation in the century to come is fantasy. Not enough data to do this.
I believe the Department of Interior was told to do this first time study so our Legislators can throw a new tax on Californian’s for mitigating the lack of water.
I am having a hard time holding the sky up and now they want me to keep on spitting.
This isn’t news to Tahoe…if one has been paying attention to years of studies and information from the expert researchers at the Tahoe Environmental Research Center. Climate change is here (check out the DATA on their website), it’s affecting Tahoe, it’s affecting our weather, and comparisons to historic droughts fail to consider the millions of people now living in CA that weren’t here during those historic droughts. Even worse, it’s happening faster than predicted years ago.
Now the motives for the DOI’s “new” report may be suspect, but the facts behind what’s already going on are not.
It was cold last night, and it is raining this morning, so those fearmongering climate change acolytes need to be totally ridiculed, then summarily dismissed. Think I’ll just turn on the TV.
The ignorance here never ceases to amaze me. Weather and climate are not the same. The science deniers sound ridiculous.
Arod-did you not realize my comment was satirical?
Sorry Hmmm. My comment was directed at the non-satirical replies.
California had a 40 year drought that ended in 1932. Many droughts have lasted over 50 years, proven by tree’s growth rings in the Tahoe region.
No one knows what will happen…..
@Mick….I’m trying hard to NOT be cynical, to keep a non-GMO grain of hope alive, but I know what will happen: the majority of citizens will stick their head in the sand watching TV shows that keep them fearful of their neighbors and of strangers by showing people cheating, raped and raped, beaten and killed and then cathartically exacting revenge all the while ignoring the impacts that population growth, resource depletion, toxic discharges in the ‘natural’ environment-water, air and earth, greed in the form of income disparity and wealth concentration, bought-off politicians-blaming-the-other-party-while-they-do-as-little-as-possible-while-enriching-themselve-at-the-trough-of-corporate-lobbyists. And people who ‘deny’ our impact regarding the changing face of our environment are sitting comfortabley on the front lines of lunacy. In my humble or not-so-humble opinion.
Anyone know what the snow level is supposed to drop to tonight?