Snow drought update
Plus: sprucing up Colorado by adopting a highway and photos from a Telluride trip
Record-setting warm and dry conditions have led to a significant snow drought in parts of the West, according to an update last week from federal officials.
“Substantial snow water equivalent (SWE) deficits have emerged throughout the Colorado Plateau, Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and in Alaska, where warm temperatures have largely prevented snow accumulation,” said the January 8 report. “Low precipitation and warm temperatures are driving the most prevalent snow drought in Arizona, New Mexico, southern Colorado, Wyoming, and Alaska.”
For the first time on record, the Flagstaff airport recorded zero precipitation in December, while several SNOTEL sites in Arizona and New Mexico had zero snow, according to the snow drought update.
The map below, from the Western Water Assessment’s Intermountain West Climate Dashboard, shows the percent of normal precipitation in December and reveals just how dry it was in the American Southwest, plus other parts of the Western region.
The Southwest isn’t the only area with a snow drought, as shown in the image below. This January 5 map uses colored circles to highlight locations where the SWE level is below the 30th percentile, while other stations are marked with an X. There are still plenty of circles in Wyoming and Montana, where conditions have improved somewhat due to recent storms. Interestingly, there are even some circles in places that have done well overall, such as the Cascades (these are lower-elevation sites where it rained due to very warm temperatures, according to the snow drought update).
The January 13 map below shows that SNOTEL stations are reporting a wide range of conditions across the West, with some impressive totals in northern California and Oregon but dismal levels in Arizona and New Mexico. There are green, yellow, and red shades in Utah and Colorado, illustrating how the snowpack can vary dramatically within a single state—in both cases, roughly along a north-to-south gradient.
By the way, we’re now officially under a La Niña advisory, which tends to bring drier weather to the Southwest.
Sprucing up Colorado
For both selfish and altruistic reasons, I’ve adopted a three-mile section of U.S. Highway 550 around Silverton.
As part of the state’s “Spruce Up Colorado” program, I’ve agreed to clean the roadside twice a year in exchange for the opportunity to advertise snow.news to passing motorists.
It took many months, but I recently discovered the Colorado Department of Transportation has erected the signs.
To some extent, the ulterior motive of promoting this newsletter was behind the decision, but I’ve also been looking for a simple, effective, and non-political way to volunteer and give back to the community.
I’ve always been a fan of road trips and enamored with the many epic drives in the American West, so when I found out this section of one of the region’s most beautiful highways hadn’t been claimed, I jumped at the opportunity.
The three-mile segment is centered on Silverton, a historic mining town and tourist destination that’s around 9,300 feet above sea level in the San Juan Mountains. The section includes a portion of the fabled Million Dollar Highway, and it’s all part of the San Juan Skyway, a stunning scenic byway that loops for 236 miles through southwest Colorado.
Picking up other people’s refuse may sound unappealing, but during the two clean-ups I conducted in 2024, I found the experience to be fascinating and rewarding!
During the first visit, my wife and daughter helped me out. They weren’t as jazzed as I was about the work, so I did the second cleanup on my own, carrying orange trash bags, wearing nitrile exam gloves, employing a trash picker tool, and covering the six-mile roundtrip patrol in a vigorous four-hour hike.
The route includes gorgeous views of surrounding mountains, the local geology that attracted prospectors hoping to strike it rich, and Mineral Creek, a tributary of the Animas River. There’s also a dispensary and a roadhouse offering cold beer and live music, plus a gas station that was a real hotspot for roadside garbage.
Like an anthropologist studying a midden, the erstwhile social scientist in me cataloged the variety of trash items along the roadside. The prevalence of beer cans and liquor shooters was somewhat disturbing, but at least I didn’t find anything really gross, like soiled diapers or something dead! Above all, the most common form of garbage was relatively small pieces of paper and plastic packaging, especially for food items that were presumably being consumed on the road.
For part of the year, the route is covered in snow, so it won’t be until late spring or early summer that I do another cleanup. If you happen to live in the area and want to help out, please email me.
Photos from a day trip to Telluride
I love to ski at Telluride, but on trips there, I wind up spending a ton of time taking photos rather than making turns. On a visit earlier this month, I drove the San Juan Skyway mentioned above, so I also made a lot of photographic pitstops along the way.
As noted above, we’re in a snow drought here in southwest Colorado, so the skiing wasn’t great at Telluride, but getting there and back was half the fun.
Below are some images from the slopes of the ski area:
And here are some shots from the drive along the San Juan Skyway:
Wonderful pictures and good for you for picking up. It's too bad that it is necessary.