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Crazy weather!
NeoBlackdog
Member Posts: 17,187 ✭✭✭✭
Holy smokes! I don't think I've ever seen it this nuts. A few days ago we were at -29 and snowing. With about 18" on the ground yesterday we hit 46 and rain. This morning we've got 40 and drizzle and the weather weenies are calling for freezing rain. When more snow falls on this mess we'll have perfect avalanche conditions in the mountains.
Our dry fluffy snow has turned to a wet heavy mess that could cause issues with a couple of the outbuilding's roofs.
Comments
I agree on the extreme shift. Local news reported as a 93 degree temp change from Dec. 22 to Dec.25th. Alot of snow has melted off my roof which is good.
Don't need or want the freezing rain. That is so dangerous for traveling and always causes so much damage.
This weather pattern is going to be extremely tough on the deer and elk on winter range. When it freezes back up, the snowpack will have a thick icy crust layer making it difficult for them to dig through for food at a critical time of their wintering.
And they are more vulnerable to predation by coyotes, bobcats, lions an wolves, because they will be able run on the crust, where fleeing deer and elk will break through slowing them down.
The mule deer in western Wyoming and eastern Idaho never fully recovered from the winter of 92, and this one looks to hammer lots of fawns, pregnant does, and rut wore down bucks.
locally, north of me about 30 miles, Idaho fish and game have already taken to feeding a herd of ~250 head of elk to keep them from traveling farther west where there cross back and forth across a busy 4 lane and into multiple hay stack yards. I don’t think they are feeding to help the farmers, but to try to eliminate the amount of elk/vehicle accidents that have occurred since this bunch of elk started migrating this route, which has only been the last 4/5 years.
Mule
We had about 3.5 feet on the ground when the rain started here. It was 17 degrees F and raining, and the day after it warmed up to 33 degrees... with more rain. And now it's pushing 40 degrees with... a lot of rain. It's wet here.
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
Here too in Michigan where I live, rain has fallon in very low, well below freezing temperatures. It should be snow but it comes down rain. Very weird indeed!
Dark dark clouds, wind and rain here in Utah. It is 45 degrees. Forecast is for rain and snow fronts through the next five days, one after another.
It's a blessing because we are still in a critical drought.
"It's a blessing because we are still in a critical drought."
It's all in your perspective, isn't it?
press time. ––– Scientists will get $25 million to
study salt lake ecosystems in the drought-stricken U.S. West, as President Biden signed legislation Tuesday allocating the funds in the face of unprecedented existential threats caused by the lack of water.
The funding allows the U.S. Geological Survey to study the hydrology of the ecosystems in and around Utah’s Great Salt Lake, California’s Mono Lake, Oregon’s Lake Albert and other saline lakes. Amid a decadeslong drought, less snowmelt has flowed through the rivers that feed into the lakes, causing shorelines to recede and lake levels to plummet.
In Utah, the Great Salt Lake shrunk to its lowest point in recorded history, posing threats to economic output, snowpack, public health and wildlife. Ski resorts worry about a future without lake effect snow.
“The Great Salt Lake and the network of saline lake ecosystems in the arid West face very serious challenges with increasingly low water levels, placing local communities and millions of migratory birds at risk,” Marcelle Shoop, the Saline Lakes Program Director for the Audubon Society, said in a statement.
The legislation signed Tuesday establishes what it calls a “Saline Lake Ecosystems in the Great Basin States Assessment and Monitoring Program” to examine variables such as water use and demand and climatic stressors.
I cut and pasted this from a local newspaper.
And yet I remember in the early 80’s while living in Cokeville Wyoming, they drilled cores on the Smith’s fork drainage, in thoughts of building a dam on the Smith’s fork about 12 miles upstream from Cokeville.
This particular drainage is the major contributor to the Bear river, which in turn is a major contributor to the Great Salt Lake.
They we’re doing this as a possible solution because the lake was so full they were afraid it would continue to rise and impact the Salt Lake airport runways.
This and an idea of sourcing several huge pumps from Sweden to pump water out into the desert and salt flats to the west never came to fruit because eventually “the tide turned” and the lake began to naturally recede.
Mule