Live satellite imagery records the turning of happiness in drought-stricken parts of the West
At least so far, California and other parts of the western United States have gone from hunger to celebration.
We are talking about rain, of course.
Before Christmas, much of Golden State has been hit by atmospheric moisture rivers and severe storms. This has brought plenty of snow to the Sierra Nevada area all the way east to Colorado.
In California, state-wide snow cover has risen from just 18 percent of normal on December 1 to a whopping 159 percent on December 28. And this turn of happiness is shared in most of the West, as this dramatic animation shows:
On December 1, 2021, almost the entire West suffered from a dramatic lack of moisture, as the colors yellow, orange, and red show. Since then, the river events in the atmosphere and the parade of storms have largely turned things around. The colors green and blue on December 27, 2021 refer to normal or higher than normal snow cover. (Credit: maps from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Animation by Tom Yulsman)
You may have heard that we are at the moment In the grip of La Niña, a climatic phenomenon that typically tilt the odds towards wetter-than-normal conditions in the northwestern Pacific, but also toward abnormal droughts in Southern California and the southwest. It’s clear that something else is going on – and I’ll be posting a story soon that looks in depth at what it could be.
The satellites document the turn
So far, the following is a selection of dramatic satellite imagery that shows how much things have changed in a few weeks:
A huge river of water vapor at the mid-level or below-level of the atmosphere flowed toward the west coast of North America on December 24, 2021, as shown by the animation of the infrared images from the GOES-West satellite above. This atmospheric river poured a lot of rain to drought-stricken California, including much-needed snow in the Sierra Nevada. Major atmospheric rivers transmits water vapor equivalent to approximately 7.5 to 15 times the average flow of the Mississippi River at its mouth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The view of this irrigated atmospheric river on the west coast of California and the rest of North America was received by the Finnish Nuclear Power Plant satellite on December 23, 2021. (Credit: NASA Worldview)
In the image above, acquired by the Finland NPP satellite in natural color, the clouds associated with the same atmospheric river extend as far as the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
Images taken by NASA’s Terra satellite nearly every month show how much the snowball has swollen in the southern part of California’s Sierra Nevada. (Image: NASA Worldview images. Animation by Tom Yulsman)
At an altitude of 512 miles in orbit, the lack of snow cover before Christmas in the Sierra Nevada area of California was painfully evident for NASA’s Terra satellite, which captured the first of the two animations above on December 1, 2021. Only the highest peaks. there was snow cover. By December 27, however, the snowshoe had expanded dramatically, as shown in another photo taken on December 27th.
On December 2, 2021, a snowball in the rocky mountains of Colorado suffered badly, as shown in the first image of this animation acquired by NASA’s Terra satellite. By December 27, a white blanket covered most of the high ground. (Image: NASA Worldview images. Animation by Tom Yulsman)
In Colorado, the snowy season began with exceptionally dry and warm conditions. In fact, the summer to the end of November was the warmest period in the state, According to the Colorado Climate Center. And November, when the snow season should have been prepared, was the 11th driest. But as the satellite imagery animation above shows, the situation has improved dramatically as we move towards the new year.
What does the future hold?
All this humidity could not come too early to the west. But the area could easily move from the current celebration back to the famine it experienced just a few weeks ago.
And whatever the next couple of months bring, continued warming poses ongoing challenges. Research show that global warming has plunged southwestern North America into a decade-long drought that is worse than ever after the 16th century. As the climate continues to warm, the drying up of this sprawling area is likely to worsen.
