Quote from: buckworks on March 20, 2026, 09:10:25 PM>> melt so fast

So where does it go? Does it cause flooding someplace?

It goes downhill and generally things don't flood unless there is a big snowpack that lasts into June so that you still have a big surface area covered in snow AND temperatures probably 10 degrees warmer than what we've been having.

All the historically big floods have happened from late November to early January. It's hard to generate enough flow from snowmelt alone, but it did happen in 2023 that we had minor flooding.

To put it in perspective, current flow at the gauging station is just under 4,000 cubic feet per second. During the January 1, 1997, flood, it was at 25,000 cfs. That put water levels about 6 feet over the road and flooded many structures, destroyed some sections of road and destroyed large sections of the sewage system.

400 people treated for heat-related illness at Arizona airshow as record temperatures bake the West - ABC News
https://abcnews.com/US/400-people-sickened-arizona-airshow-record-heat-bakes/story?id=131300971

> Arizona

"But it's a dry heat."

> flooding

Forgot to mention that when it had melted down to about 3 feet, I took a cubic foot out of the center of the column and weighed it. 15 pounds.

So the column weighed roughly 45 pounds (probably 40 pounds because the top was still very light). Roughly speaking, that's 8 inches of water. So if that melts totally in 16 days, that's equivalent to half an inch a day of rain flowing into the creeks, but like the rain is only falling over areas covered in snow. So perhaps like a storm that drops 1/4 inch over the the whole area.

In other words, we need a lot more snow and a lot higher temperatures before flooding is a concern

A Once-in-a-4,433-Year Heat Wave Is Hitting the Western U.S. - Heatmap News
https://heatmap.news/climate/march-heat-wave

>> "This year, at least for precipitation, it's been really quite good [in California],"

But... as he says, too warm. Way too much of that fell as rain. So take snow drought and combine that with record-warm spring and that doesn't leave much runoff to spin turbines this summer.

It's one that that gets missed in the criticism that solar is intermittent. In the SW, you need the most power precisely when you have the most sun. It's a different calculation in the cold and cloudy north where energy consumption (though not necessarily electricity given the current mix), peaks in cold weather.

QuoteBoth were historically bad fire seasons: In 2005, a then-record 8.7 million acres burned, and in 2015, the U.S. broke more than 10 million acres burned for the first time.

Correction: for the first time since modern record keeping. Fire ecologists believe that seasonal fires typically burned 6-12 million acres before 1800 (i.e. before Euro-Americans started doing fire suppression)