Western Weather 2017-18 and Later

I'm fascinated by the reappearance of long-disappeared bodies of water like Lake Manly in Death Valley even if, as this Washington Post article notes, it's for the "wrong" (global warming) reasons.

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Why are so many people getting stuck on California roads..that they know are socked in with blizzards.
I would never attempt to drive in that. Well..I have driven in them some times in NY...but this is insane.
 
jamesdeluxe said:
I'm fascinated by the reappearance of long-disappeared bodies of water like Lake Manly in Death Valley even if, as this Washington Post article notes, it's for the "wrong" (global warming) reasons.

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Interesting. I assume other lakes in the general south west area will benefit from the recent rain. I think I've read about a dire situation at Lake Mead in the past couple of years. Hopefully it gets some love.

Edit. I just checked it out. Seems that it's bounced back to a degree.
 
jamesdeluxe said:
it's for the "wrong" (global warming) reasons.
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Another example of spurious attribution of weather events. The tropical storm last August which formed that lake was almost identical to one in 1976. There was nothing unusual at all about the atmospheric river storms of the first week of February. I don't know what particular circumstances allowed some of that rain (about 1.5 inches) to reach Death Valley.

The Lake Mead/Colorado River Basin problem is different. Colorado River water was overallocated 100 years ago based upon an unusually wet preceding 20 years. There is also a global warming component in terms of more evaporation during the hotter summers.
 
I avidly read about the reappearance of Tulare Lake a year ago in central CA. Wikipedia sez:
  • Before it began to go dry in the late 1800s, Tulare Lake was the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi River. It was shallow, no more than 50 feet deep, but during wet years stretched 800 square miles or more. Lake Tahoe, by contrast, is about 191 square miles, though it's much deeper.
  • For thousands of years, from the Paleolithic onward, Tulare Lake was a uniquely rich area, which supported perhaps the largest population of Native Americans north of present-day Mexico.
  • In the second half of the 19th Century, Tulare Lake was dried up by diverting its tributary rivers for agricultural irrigation and municipal water uses. In modern times, it is usually a dry lake with residual wetlands and marshes. The lake reappears during unusually high levels of rainfall or snow melt: 1942, 1969, 1983, 1997, 1998, and 2023.

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One of two remaining historical photos of the lake (from 1880) before it began shrinking:
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If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, here's a 12-minute youtube clip:
 
berkshireskier said:
68" of new snow at Jackson Hole at the top of the mountain, so far in the first week of March. 17" in the past 24 hours.
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That run of snow at Jackson started with 20 inches the last 3 days of February, very impressive. Today is the last forecast of new snow for awhile and highs will be 31F by this weekend.
 
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