{"id":521912,"date":"2018-02-12T15:10:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T22:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=521912"},"modified":"2018-02-12T15:10:28","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T22:10:28","slug":"record-low-snowpack-foretells-troubling-spring-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/02\/record-low-snowpack-foretells-troubling-spring-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"Record low snowpack foretells troubling spring, summer"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_521917\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-521917\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sandia-peak-2-20180131-771x401.png\" alt=\"Sandia Peak on Jan. 31.\" width=\"771\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sandia-peak-2-20180131-771x401.png 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sandia-peak-2-20180131-336x175.png 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sandia-peak-2-20180131-768x399.png 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sandia-peak-2-20180131.png 1043w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">From Our Land (NM In Focus). Drone footage shot by Anthony Rodriguez<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sandia Peak on Jan. 31.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>On the last day of January, Kerry Jones points to signs near the Crest Trail in the Sandia Mountains. Nailed to a conifer, the signs guide cross-country skiers along the trail and they\u2019re placed high enough to be visible in the winter snows. Today, the signs are a good three feet above his outstretched arm. Beneath his boots, there are only a couple of inches of snow.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not supposed to be this way.<\/p>\n<p>And a few hundred yards away at Sandia Peak, the view is even more grim.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<article id=\"post-506160\" class=\"hnews item post-506160 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-news-and-analysis tag-dona-ana-county tag-john-vasquez tag-women\">\n<div class=\"entry-content clearfix\">\n<p>This article comes from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpoliticalreport.com\/804529\/record-low-snowpack-foretells-troubling-spring-summer-en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Mexico Political Report<\/a>,\u00a0a nonprofit news organization\u00a0focused on promoting a greater public understanding of politics and policy in the state of New Mexico.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Thousands of feet below, the Rio Grande Valley is dusty and dry. To the west, Mount Taylor should be a hulking white mass this time of year. Instead it\u2019s just a deeper shade of blue than the sky. Along Sandia Crest, what snow there might have been has blown back from the edge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re up at just a little bit above 10,000 feet and in the world of weather this is high altitude,\u201d says Jones, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque. \u201cThis time of year we should be not on bare ground as we are today, but [standing in] several feet of snow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lack of snow in New Mexico\u2019s mountains will have implications for farmers and cities in the spring and summer. And certain tree populations in many of the state\u2019s mountain ranges, including the Sandias and Jemez Mountains, are already experiencing large-scale dieoffs. Drought and warming temperatures have weakened ponderosa pines and some conifers, which make them even more vulnerable to insect outbreaks. And communities should be preparing for wildfire season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are standing at the driest start to any water year on record in the observational period, which goes back to the late 1890s,\u201d Jones says. \u201cThere is no one alive today that\u2019s seen it drier for any start to a water year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A water year begins October 1, and helps meteorologists, water managers, tribes and various agencies plan. Jones says New Mexico\u2019s snow accumulation season typically begins in late October. From there, snowpack is supposed to build through early spring. Jones says storms may still hit the Sandias and other mountains in New Mexico this spring \u2014 and this weekend\u2019s storms brought one to six inches to places like Gallup, Santa Fe and Angel Fire. But new snow won\u2019t likely make up for the existing deficit.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe would basically need two and a half times our normal precipitation for northern New Mexico into southern Colorado to even bring us back to where we should be this time of year,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you think about it, that\u2019s just a tremendous deficit to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It would be \u201cpretty unprecedented,\u201d he says, to get that much snow between now and early April.<\/p>\n<p>On the last day of January, the National Weather Service even issued a Red Flag Warning for most of eastern New Mexico. These warnings alert people to critical fire weather patterns and usually start in the spring. It was the sixth they issued in January.<\/p>\n<p>Winds increase fire danger and whip up dust storms. They also dry out soils and whisk snows away before they can melt and make their way into streams and rivers.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a problem as New Mexico\u2019s springs become warmer, earlier.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs we\u2019ve seen for the last several years, we\u2019re not getting as much snow \u2014 and it\u2019s warmer and so we\u2019re melting that snow much earlier,\u201d says Jones. Instead of snowmelt peaking in May and June, when farmers need that water for their fields and orchards, the waters are churning in late February or March.<\/p>\n<p>And of course, people are already worried about fire season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a pretty scary year,\u201d says Tom Swetnam, regents\u2019 professor emeritus of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona, where he directed the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. \u201cI\u2019m very worried about this year, which is shaping up to be an extraordinary drought year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The connection between drought and fire is obvious in the 20th and early 21st centuries\u2014think about Las Conchas, a wildfire that ripped through 156,000 acres of the Jemez in 2011. It\u2019s also visible within the tree-ring record, which Swetnam and his colleagues have been studying for more than 30 years. And their records go back centuries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lack of moisture in the cool season preceding fire season is really key,\u201d says Swetnam. Dry winters and springs are a recipe for bigger, hotter fires in the Southwest.<\/p>\n<p>Overlaid onto cycles of drought is long-term warming. As the Earth continues warming, droughts aren\u2019t just dry. They\u2019re also warmer than they used to be in the past, Swetnam says.\u00a0\u201cNow, when we flip into a drought mode on a yearly or seasonal basis, on top of that, the magnitude of the drying is exacerbated by warming,\u201d he says. \u201cIt makes it even more intense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tree ring scientists peer into the past to understand the impact of drought on forests. But Swetnam can also look outside his window to see how how forests in the Jemez Mountains have changed over the past few decades. Swetnam grew up in Jemez Springs and moved back here from Tucson a few years ago.<\/p>\n<p>His father was a forest ranger on the Jemez Ranger District, and he recalls playing in the snow on the hillsides off the highway between Jemez Springs and the Valles Caldera. Those same grassy valley bottoms and rounded hills are now covered in trees. \u201cThere\u2019s been an increase in density just within my lifetime,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s clearly noticeable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After decades of fire suppression and overgrazing, the forests became far too dense \u2014 and those fuels also increase the risk of high-severity fires.<\/p>\n<p>Swetnam warns against overgeneralizing across all forest types and elevations in the Southwest. But the Jemez is the \u201cposter child for high severity wildfire\u201d in New Mexico. \u201cOne after another, fires have been eating away at the forest up here, creating giant canopy holes and destroying hundreds of homes,\u201d he says, \u201cwith the potential of losing thousands of homes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Forest Service and its federal, state, tribal and local partners have been working to thin the forests. And Swetnam is encouraged by programs like the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpoliticalreport.com\/274925\/jemez-forest-partnership-focuses-on-science-collaboration\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Southwest Jemez Mountains Resilient Landscapes and Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project<\/a>. \u201cThere are other organizations, like The Nature Conservancy and others, that are working hard to try to turn things around in terms of the resiliency of our forests, and make them more resilient,\u201d he says. But people living within and alongside the forest need to take fire seriously. Right now, people should be reducing fuels around their homes, and preparing to evacuate if the time comes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe all have a collective responsibility to deal with the problems, especially if you have a home in the forest \u2014 it is your responsibility to reduce the risk to you home, your neighbor\u2019s home \u2014 and the firefighters who would have to come in and try to save houses,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p><em>This story was reported with New Mexico In Focus. To watch last Friday\u2019s episode of \u201cOur Land: New Mexico\u2019s Environmental Past, Present and Future,\u201d visit\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ntix1MnZhaI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>. You can also learn more about the series at the New Mexico In Focus\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/our-land\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The lack of snow in New Mexico\u2019s mountains will have implications for farmers and cities in the spring and summer. And of course, people are already worried about fire season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":521917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[147,277],"class_list":["post-521912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-environment","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}