Vivid Satellite Imagery Captures a Reversal of Fortune for Drought-Plagued Parts of the West
Gargantuan atmospheric rivers of moisture along with a series of storms have provided desperately needed relief.
ImaGeo iconImaGeoBy Tom YulsmanDec 28, 2021 10:20 PM
At least for now, California and other parts of the western United States have gone from famine to feast.
We're talking about precipitation, of course.
Since before Christmas, large portions of the Golden State have gotten hosed by atmospheric rivers of moisture and a series of potent storms. This has brought copious snowfall to the Sierra Nevada range all the way east to Colorado.
In California, statewide snowpack has gone from just 18 percent of normal on December 1 to a whopping 159 percent for December 28. And that reversal of fortune has been shared througout most of the West, as this dramatic animation shows:
Western U.S. Snowpack
On Dec. 1, 2021, nearly the entire West was suffering from a dramatic dearth of moisture, as indicated by the yellow, orange and red colors. Since then, atmospheric river events and a parade of storms have mostly turned things around, with green and blue colors on Dec. 27, 2021 indicative of normal to above-normal snowpack. (Credit: Maps from Natural Resources Conservation Service. Animation by Tom Yulsman)
You may have heard that we're currently in the grips of La Niña, a climatic phenomenon that typically tilts the odds toward wetter than normal conditions in the Pacific Northwest but also toward abnormal dryness across southern California and the Southwest. Clearly, something else is going on — and I'll post a story soon that looks in depth at just what that might be.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/vivid-satellite-imagery-captures-a-reversal-of-fortune-for-drought-plagued
