March heat in American west has left snowpack at record-low levels (theguardian.com)

by ijidak 55 comments 114 points
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55 comments

[−] bayarearefugee 43d ago
Shouldn't we be past being "stunned"? The past 11 years are the hottest 11 years on record.

Climate catastrophe is coming, soon. Everybody knows this, even the vocal deniers (the ones with power, not the sheep they feed propaganda to). They've simply decided to profit off it instead of trying to slow it down.

The "drill, baby, drill", "clean beautiful coal" lunacy and wanting to invade Greenland and Canada are all directly related.

[−] czinck 43d ago
Yes, winters are getting worse and worse, but this year was really bad, way worse than any predictions. I was in Park City in February and there was so little snow it looked like summer, and that was before the streak of warm and dry weather this article is talking about. I literally hiked up to the 2002/2034 Olympic facilities in 55 degree weather with no snow on the ground, while the Olympics were still going on in Milan. And I was in Park City because they had more snow than Colorado...
[−] blipvert 43d ago
Can’t remember the exact quote, but there is something in The Omen II about future wars being fought over food (Thorn corporation being involved in agriculture/fertiliser or something).

Last time that I saw it I wondered if the Ukraine conflict might be about control of the “Breadbasket of Europe” as much as anything.

[−] everdrive 43d ago
But of course Thomas Malthus was wrong about everything and we just keep need to growing populations.
[−] wak90 43d ago
It's pretty indicative of the situation that you're unironically trying to say Malthus was right about some things, actually.
[−] nradov 43d ago
Control over European food supplies might have been a minor factor in Putin's decision to invade Ukraine but that was secondary to establishing a greater Russian empire with defensible strategic depth. A lot of Ukraine's wheat exports went to Egypt and they have suffered significant food cost inflation due to the war.
[−] realo 43d ago
The polar bears are drowning up north.

I would say climate catastrophe is already here... at least for them.

[−] hervature 43d ago
The polar bear population has steadily been increasing since the 1960s [1]. Basically double what it was. The more falsifiable information you use the less you are helping the cause.

[1] - https://thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2024/02/Crockford-State-...

[−] SirFatty 43d ago
Ah, but "stuns" gets the clicks!
[−] patchorang 43d ago
There are quite a few comments here talking about how comparing images from feb/march isn’t useful. Here’s data on what’s going on. This snowtel location is within the Utah picture in the article.

https://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/dbdata/station/swegraph/swegraph_...

[−] slwvx 43d ago
I own land and water shares in the Great Basin and can confirm that this is real.

On a more positive note, one random person in the area unexpectedly confirmed that they thought global warming was indeed real.

[−] saltcured 43d ago
Our whole flood control and water supply system is designed around the expected storage of water as snow.

Ignoring horrifying drought scenarios, it is also troubling to think about how this will change if we start having warm winters and more of the winter precipitation as rain.

I think the worst case would be if we end up like some tropical countries, where they can have disastrous flooding and then drought in very short cycles. The water comes all at once and you cannot hope to control or contain it. But there are also gaps that strain the ability to store enough water and manage consumption rates.

[−] bpt3 43d ago
I have to ask because this makes no sense to me: In the article, there is a picture of 3 workers taking a snow survey and finding "zero measurement of snow". This is reported as "the second lowest since 2015".

How is any measurement of a quantity of an item less than zero? You can't have negative snow to my knowledge.

[−] lazystar 43d ago
I don't see the point in comparing photos of snow coverage in feb 2026 to the same area in march 2026. March is a spring month, of course snow coverage will be worse. Itd be more shocking if the snow coverage increased. they should show march 2026 vs. march 2025/2024/2023 etc.
[−] ourmandave 43d ago
I was naively hoping they were stunned because it wasn't as much as they expected.
[−] bix6 43d ago
Colorado river collapsing this year?
[−] justonepost2 43d ago
Just another few million blackwells bro and the AGI will solve it for us.
[−] FpUser 43d ago
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