‘Drought Beyond Extreme’

La Platas, April 16th

La Platas, May 1st

The headline of this post is the headline of The Journal (serving Cortez, Dolores and Mancos in southwest CO), for April 27, 2018. I just drove back from a camping trip up in Moab. During the night, the windstorms were so incredibly fierce I cranked my popup camper down so the wind wouldn’t blow my top off. The wind’s been blowing for weeks, and only intensifying the drought’s harsh grip on an already arid land. The snow’s fast melting from the La Platas (see photos above), and its already disappeared from Sleeping Ute, the Carrizo, the Lukachukai, the Chuskas, from the Blues in southeastern UT, and will soon be gone from the La Sals above Moab.

We haven’t had significant rain or snowfall since last fall, and long-range forecasts predict little hope of relief this summer. Though the drought stretches from SoCal through Kansas, it’s even worse here in the Four Corners. This is a 50-year drought. Record high temps have predominated, making this the winter without a winter. Snowpack from the area’s mountains came in at half the annual average. Reservoirs won’t reach seasonal full pool. Farms will have to do with much less water, perhaps as much as 20% less.

Fire season has come early, with early fire bans in effect and a few brush fires already moldering. The Four Corners is in Exceptional Drought, D4, the worst drought category out of 5. So we are on alert, and I imagine Disaster Decs are in the offing for the Four Corners region shared by AZ, CO, NM and UT.

I live in an overgrown area of mixed pinyon-juniper and ponderosa forest. There are signs the trees are under stress, and this will only accelerate the beetle kill that’s been slowly marching over from Wolf Creek Pass farther east. Stock ponds are drying up. A wetland pond at the bottom of a hill just below my home shows the first signs of drying up in its history of several decades. The pintails which nest there in the spring will probably abandon their ducklings if the pond dies. The pair of Canada Geese which nest there every year have already left. Reservoirs on either side of me are mudflats.

If the dry lightning comes, and it often does in drought years, I hope to get out with me, my cat, and I.  Stay tuned.

Update: Four summers later, we found some relief in our immediate vicinity. Yet the largest reservoirs in North America – Mead and Powell – make national news with record lows. They’re just about at dead pool, the point at which they can no longer generate hydroelectric power. The drought has affected the whole West, and the 50-year drought mentioned above has turned into a thousand-year drought.

It’s worldwide, as Europe is experiencing a 500-year drought, Mexico is in severe drought, China has broken all records. Worst drought in history (since records have been kept) seems to be the headline in Europe and parts of Asia, and North America has been no exception. Crop failures will ensue.

This is happening now, not in some future UN climate change projection. That means, we needed to make changes now as well.