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CF
climber
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Jan 23, 2015 - 03:26pm PT
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It seems the drought is much worse this year than last especially since it is year 4.
Here is the base of Central Pillar at Middle Cathedral Rock yesterday 1/22/15. Normally you wouldnt go near here as there would be snow and ice fall and the area is very wet. This year the base is BONE dry with no water seeping out anywhere, the dirt is dust dry. I was told that wells in Yosemite Valley that usually artesian this time of year are not, scary.
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jonnyrig
climber
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Jan 23, 2015 - 03:40pm PT
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Gota be 60 plus degrees here in Reno today. Beautiful weather. Got some ski resorts shutting down... lack of snow. Meh. Probably be out climbing something obscure on Sunday.
Occurs to me that we've been pushing the farmers out of the really prime areas with more natural irrigation in order to pave it over, put in a suburb, and stock up the shelves in the local Whole Foods with stuff from places like Mendota, or wherever it is we've determined is just worthless enough to be left over for farm land. Wasn't San Jose a fertile area at one time? Now we just grow inter-city youth there, right...?
Also just watched this movie at the behest of a Diesel Technology text book. (odd, right?) Anyway, their point in the movie was that 2015 was the plateau year when we'd better decrease our emissions OR ELSE. So now the question is, what do I teach my kids?
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Flip Flop
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:04am PT
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kunlun_shan
Mountain climber
SF, CA
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:33am PT
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Last real snowfall in the Sierra was Dec. 21st. Its getting grim at the resorts, and the little snow in the backcountry is bulletproof.
Have never had to worry about rockfall at the resort before, but yesterday a 15 pound stone bounced past me at high speed on Sentinel. It was dislodged by a skier and flew 600' vertical before it stopped. Fortunately, no one was in the way.
Yesterday @Kirkwood:
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:55am PT
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Not quite as bad here in Utah, but still a little strange.
Was up at Solitude yesterday, and it was pretty much T-shirt weather sitting on the deck for lunch. And the runs have a lot more poking through than I'd normally expect in January. Most of it's brush and not rocks, but still...
One year with this high pressure ridge is an outlier. Multiple years in a row like we've had, and it starts to look like something has actually changed in the weather patterns.
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cholo_franky
Social climber
W. Walker River
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Jan 26, 2015 - 10:22am PT
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From a decadal-centennial perspective the drought is not too bad right now. Give it 150 years. Then it may be the worst in roughly 2500 years. Had teh peoplz not stolen all the water, ecological things would be stressed but otherwise fine. As is, not good for teh critterz!
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bergbryce
climber
East Bay, CA
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Jan 26, 2015 - 11:13am PT
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/\ That picture was in the powdiction post a couple weeks ago. Can you or someone else explain the significance? I see a row of dead trunks poking up in a river bed.
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cholo_franky
Social climber
W. Walker River
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Jan 26, 2015 - 11:33am PT
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Nice! Ya the powdiction dudes are some homies from grad school...photo should b credited to them.
You have identified the precise WTF? significance...trees growing in a river! Looking at how provides insight into the current water issues facing much of the west and many other dryland regions of the world.
Those trees grew when streamflow in the W Walker was so low that Jeffery Pines could grow for 100-150 years. This period was known as the medieval climate anomaly and was characterized by two periods of severe drought in the western Great Basin. The two periods were broken up by an interval of increased precipitation lasted maybe 80 years and caused the river to rise and kill the first set of trees. Drier times retruned and the next set grew before the climate became wetter. Annual precipitation totals estimated during the dry times of the walker trees are not unlike the last few years, but they lasted for 100+ years. The river channel flows over bedrock and is constrained by bedrock, alluvial, and glacial landforms so the argument that the river flowed elsewhere doesn't work. Scary shiz on how bad it could get. Rivers and lakes dry up completely or to mere puddles, no bueno holmes!
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krahmes
Social climber
Stumptown
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Jan 26, 2015 - 09:32pm PT
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Those trees grew when streamflow in the W Walker was so low that Jeffery Pines could grow for 100-150 years. This period was known as the medieval climate anomaly and was characterized by two periods of severe drought in the western Great Basin. The two periods were broken up by an interval of increased precipitation lasted maybe 80 years and caused the river to rise and kill the first set of trees. Drier times retruned and the next set grew before the climate became wetter. Annual precipitation totals estimated during the dry times of the walker trees are not unlike the last few years, but they lasted for 100+ years. The river channel flows over bedrock and is constrained by bedrock, alluvial, and glacial landforms so the argument that the river flowed elsewhere doesn't work.
I’m intrigued by the picture of the stumps in the river but confused by the explanation. So those stumps have been carbon dated to have died 750 year before the present? As I understand the medieval warm period is defined as being between 950-1250 AD. Were the trees buried and then exhumed in the W Walker flood of 1997? While the granitic bedrock is tough material, even granite will erode. As for alluvial and glacial landforms I don’t understand why a river like W Walker wouldn’t move those; the course and banks of W Walker certainly got moved around in 1997 flood and the state highway departments put it back to the way it was.
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doc bs
Social climber
Northwest
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Jan 27, 2015 - 12:09am PT
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No snow in PNW and more sun than rain. We've been riding mt bikes instead of skiing, all the goods are on Mt Rainier and Baker right now.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jan 27, 2015 - 02:43am PT
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HOW BAD IS IT??
bad, Bad, BAD!
We sat on the fence with CFC's in aresol cans for to long as well
We never learn and never wil!
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Jan 27, 2015 - 07:40am PT
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Well, clearly on a geological timescale there have been severe climate changes and droughts and "California" has endured.
Even on a the scale of a bristlecone or sequoia's lifespan that may be true.
But the last 200 years have completely changed things. How well have the grizzlies or the sequoias endured over that time frame? Human effects on the environment in a place like CA totally change the equation. Maybe not for the granite, but for just about everything else.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Jan 27, 2015 - 07:53am PT
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Further crazy info from the National Weather Service in SLC yesterday:
"While we did not break many temperature records in Utah's valleys due to inversion conditions, we did have record temperatures above the surface. Our office sends up weather balloons twice a day, every day, and has been doing so since 1956. On our balloon release this afternoon, we recorded a temperature of 7.8 degrees Celsius at the pressure level of 700 mb (that is, approximately 10,000 feet above sea level). This is the warmest temperature we have ever recorded at that level between December 17 and March 21."
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Mike Bolte
Trad climber
Planet Earth
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Jan 27, 2015 - 08:04am PT
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Dingus - not sure what you mean by that. Certainly the climate models for at least the past 15 years have indicated a warming leading to a higher ratio of rain/snow and an overall drying of California this century. The last three years could be on that trend.
EDIT: ah, of course we have a good historical record of a big spectrum of droughts from dry years to 200-year dry spells. Put these variations on top of a general trend and you do change the probabilities for any year or decade or century being drier than the historical averages.
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John M
climber
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Jan 27, 2015 - 08:11am PT
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I think what Dingus is saying is that, based on the evidence presented above about the stumps, that there have been severe droughts in California history pre industrial revolution, that this means that one can not rule out that this current drought is not just another one of those droughts, for which we do not know the reason.
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Flip Flop
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Jan 27, 2015 - 08:34am PT
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Causation vs . Correlation please.
There is obvious correlation. You can use the term causation or dependence to obfuscate the issue, but correlation is exactly how we study things like warming vs. warming.
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dirtbag
climber
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Jan 27, 2015 - 08:36am PT
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Thanks for the sierra nature notes link, dingus. Good reading!
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Jan 27, 2015 - 08:51am PT
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Agree, difficult to prove causation or correlation one way or the other.
But the fact there have been significant warmer and drier periods in the distant, pre-civilization past doesn't mean that this one isn't either partly driven or worsened by human-caused global warming.
Either way, I'd say that trying to definitively answer that question is somewhat irrelevant for the current and near future generations of humans and the environment in the West. Regardless of the cause, if we're entering a longish period of warmer and drier conditions, and we've made economic/resource/planning decisions over the last 100 years based off of wetter, cooler conditions, we and the environment may have some problems going forward.
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10b4me
climber
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Jan 27, 2015 - 08:54am PT
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Is there a correlation between the dry winters, in the west, and wet winters, in the east?
Also, I haven't paid a whole lot of attention, but it seems as though the middle of the country has had a pretty mild winter.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 27, 2015 - 08:54am PT
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Today it is raining.
The drought is officially over.
Until tomorrow when it stops raining ......
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