High Sierra Topix

No one is complaining too hard about the snow this month. We certainly needed it.

Next Spring could be interesting in the burned areas. Reduced ground cover means the runoff will be high. The severely burned areas on slopes will have slides. OTOH the groundwater will recharge better with reduced vegetative cover and springs/streams may flow longer.

Reservoirs are at 36% capacity and 54% of historical average.

Most of NorCal had either a record driest or second record driest January and average snowpack levels for the High Sierra are 80-90% and dropping. January and February are generally the wettest months - we'd need both a wet very cold spring to recover, but it's converging on last years winter in central and northern California. Things are obviously erratic, but I highly doubt we'll see a summer like '17 or '19.

On a non-quantitative note, we can blame Kim Stanley Robinson for using the remaining glaciers to chill his Scotch heh:

This coming summer he will publish “The High Sierra: A Love Story” [...] ‘It was the smallest living glacier that you could possibly imagine,’ Robinson told me. He broke off a tiny chunk and carried it back to camp for the hikers to use in their Scotch. ‘It was like a goodbye,’ he said. ‘Like going to a hospice visit.’

There's a certain bittersweetness to the high country - I've thought of being in the backcountry like holding a friend's hand as you watch them die for a while now. Interesting to see that thought echoed elsewhere.