Comment by lisper
13 hours ago
Ironically, the rest of the country is having a drought:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/01/18/winter-dro...
13 hours ago
Ironically, the rest of the country is having a drought:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/01/18/winter-dro...
Bone dry here in Utah. Just as local government has been lowering their guard on the Great Salt Lake issue due to a couple strong snowpack years. Really hope we're proactive in response to the lack of snow.
Yeah, I want another 950" of snow at Alta Ski Resort again. That year - 2023 I think, was unreal!
Same in idaho. We are looking at historic lows for our reservoirs.
Same in Oregon. Snowpack way below normal.
Colorado is having a record low snow season. It's been tough for skiing.
Not great up here in Vancouver either - lots of rain but not snow. The problem with this is that even though we'll have full reservoirs at the start of the summer, when the rain ends, we deplete the lakes rapidly, and that slope downward gets steeper every year. It really makes me think that we'll need more dams, more reservoirs, to hold in more of the precious fresh water rather than letting it all run out. All winter long the rivers have been at really high flow rates because the lakes are full and the dams are wide open letting it go... but we'll miss that water in a few months!
Solar panels can also help, as BC gets long sunny days when the reservoirs are low.
Damn, is this the first time ever the east coast is doing better than Colorado? We’ve had record snowfalls all over Quebec, I spent all day last Friday skiing in a foot of fresh powder. Unheard of on the ice coast*.
*not literally. But still, crazy amount of snow this year so far
You're all in California's rain shadow.
Unironically, wet / dry cycles isn't good news for California either.
I wonder how much of an effect human activity has on these cycles. Obviously, there are cycles within nature that don't include human activity but is this particular "equilibrium" (if we could call it that) the result of human settlements and all that entails or have they always happened this way but without a huge chunk of the population being in the midst of these modulations to witness it and be affected by it.
This might be a good time to recommend you all read the first 5 pages of East of Eden by George Steinbeck. It’s about how the Salinas valley goes through flood and draught cycles, and how every time they’re in one cycle they forget the other one ever happened
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Depends on how you quantify human impact. Lodgepole Pine (for example) is fire adapted. That's not something that evolved overnight. So it's safe to say that broad swaths of California have been experiencing a feast-famine cycle since before humanity developed agriculture.
welcome to australia
wildfire is part of nature.
Yes, of course, those natural wildfires started by downed power infrastructure [1], bullets [2], and campfires on red flag days [3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Fire
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldor_Fire
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Fire
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