Why dwindling snow in mountains east of Modesto should startle everyone
When we’re warned that someday there won’t be much snow in mountains east of Modesto, we may think of how we’ll miss tubing with the kids on snowy patches by Long Barn, Strawberry or Spicer, or at Leland Snow Play near Pinecrest.
Reduced snow would mean fewer skiing days at Dodge Ridge or Bear Valley.
But climate change will affect more than just those looking for snow recreation. All of our lives will be touched, because all of us drink water and eat food requiring water to grow.
Everyone who has had a glass of water from taps in Modesto, Salida, Empire, Grayson, Del Rio and parts of Ceres and Turlock since 1994 has drunk water from the Sierra Nevada. That year, Modesto started buying treated Tuolumne River water and mixing it with about the same amount of groundwater to deliver to customers in those cities and towns.
Manteca, Lathrop and Tracy do the same with Stanislaus River water, which also comes from the mountains, and Turlock and Ceres soon will with Tuolumne water, which also slakes San Francisco’s thirst. In all, snowpack provides about 30% of California’s drinking water.
And almost all farmers here and throughout the entire Central Valley rely at least in part on water from rivers. It starts with winter snowpack melting into streams captured by foothill reservoirs for gradual river release as needed by crops and orchards in the spring, summer and fall.
Almonds, walnuts, cherries, peaches, corn, cabbage — everything we grow and ship all over the country, and in some cases all over the world — starts with snow in the mountains.
So studies predicting substantial reduction in snowpack shouldn’t bother just sledding or snowboarding weekend warriors. Such reports ought to concern people who hunt, fish, boat, raft, farm, bathe, eat or drink. In short, all of us.
A Central Valley warning
While attending a land-use symposium for journalists at Harvard University in 2008, I was startled when a science professor predicted this exact scenario during an eye-opening presentation on climate change. Everyone called it global warming back then, because of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” documentary, which had come out two years before.
I remember staring at the slideshow screen as this professor showed a model of disappearing snowpack on the other side of the continent from my seat in Massachusetts — the Sierra Nevada range. My — our — back yard, playground, and life source.
Fast forward 13 years to a few days ago, when Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory released a sober study with a similar prediction, only this time with actual dates, assuming earth conditions and carbon emissions continue as they have. Much of the Sierra could experience five consecutive years of little snow in just 25 years, and 10 straights years of mountain drought by the late 2050s, the study says.
That would be ruinous and catastrophic for the Valley and beyond.
The team of scientists didn’t produce the study, published in the November edition of the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, to scare us. They’re just saying what all signs point to, and suggesting we get ready.
We’re already affected. The current drought has dropped California reservoirs to perilously low levels. State officials on Wednesday warned city dwellers to brace for mandatory reductions in home water use. We had enough surprisingly heavy October snow this year for some ski resorts to open, but nothing since. Snowfall usually closes the Highway 108 Sonora Pass by November and it has remained open past Christmas only once in the past 14 years; right now, it’s dry and open.
These swings are noteworthy for their unpredictability. It’s really hard for water managers to do their jobs right when they can’t count on the weather.
Preparing for less snow
As the climate warms, water won’t just disappear from the atmosphere, but will come more in rain than snow. That’s why Modesto’s Vance Kennedy, a retired U.S. Geological Survey scientist, for years has been advocating groundwater recharge, or beefing up our ability to store water below the surface.
Several politicians for decades have argued for above-ground storage, or dams and reservoirs, with very limited success. Opposition from the environmental lobby, which often has the law on its side, has proven an exceptionally tough nut to crack.
More water agencies up and down the state should embrace aerial snow surveys, like the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts have. Airborne Snow Observatory technology, developed at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, predicts water content in the snowpack with 97% accuracy, giving water managers a stronger planning tool each spring. The old way of measuring, with snowshoes and aluminum tubes, can be off 30% to 50%.
Shrinking snowpack is a mind-bender, for sure. Makes all the things written by me and my predecessors about California’s water wars, with attendant negotiations and decades-long strife and lawsuits, pale in comparative importance. If there’s little or no water, what are we fighting over?
The battle will go on, of course, because our economy and well-being depend on continued access to water, and we can’t let the wealthy and powerful bully it from us.
But we had also better do more — much, much more — to better measure and store the precious lifeblood we can’t do without, before it’s too late.
We’ve been warned. Now is the time to act.
