AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
It's now officially spring, but in the American West, folks are still getting over the winter that wasn't. States from Colorado to Oregon are reporting their driest and warmest winter on record, and that has potentially dire consequences for the region's water reserves. NPR's Western correspondent Kirk Siegler joins us now from Boise, Idaho. Thanks for being with us.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Good morning. Glad to be here.
RASCOE: So just how hot was this winter in the West?
SIEGLER: Well, it was really the winter that wasn't. For skiers, we call it low tide. There's barely any snow. And when we did get storms, they tended to be really warm, so rain at very high altitudes, not good for skiing, Ayesha. But more to the point of why you guys called me up, it's horrible for the snowpack and storing water in this region.
RASCOE: And snow is the main water supply in the West, right?
SIEGLER: Exactly. You know, we rely on a healthy snowpack to slowly melt into our huge reservoirs where it's stored to get us through the dry summers.
RASCOE: And up until this weekend, the West has also been dealing with a heat dome. Some have recorded their earliest ever triple-digit temperatures. In the mountains, that's causing rapid snowmelt. So, Kirk, is there even that much snow left to melt at this point after such a dry winter?
SIEGLER: It's a good question. I mean, you look at photos of the mountains around, like, Lake Tahoe right now, and it's kind of like back to where they were right around Christmas - brown hillsides. Here in Boise, I'm looking at the mountains behind the studio here, and they don't look much better. The local ski area, Bogus Basin, is closing today, same with Snowbasin in Utah and Sierra at Tahoe. I mean, this is weeks early, and the news isn't much better when you look at the rivers. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, every single river basin in the West has experienced its warmest or second warmest winter on record. Now, some of coastal California was a bit of a bright spot. They did get a lot of rain this winter, which I asked Brent Pascua about. He's a CAL FIRE battalion chief. And he pointed out that the irony is that with all that rain, it gets lush and green, and it turns to brittle in prolonged heat.
BRENT PASCUA: We are definitely experiencing a heat wave, which we're used to. We're just not used to it this early in the year. The forecast all the way till June shows very little moisture, so that's concerning.
RASCOE: Is there any hope that things could turn around, or is it too late, and we're likely headed toward a smoky summer?
SIEGLER: I mean, maybe. But, like, Ayesha, like everything in the world right now, everything feels unpredictable. I mean, climate scientists have started blaming this past warm winter out here on the rapidly melting Arctic, which is causing the jet stream to swing away from us. And then there's this huge blob of warm water out in the Pacific that's sending us these warm storms, at least when we get them. Now, there are some exceptions, of course, in the West, but everyone is really worried about the Colorado River Basin. The federal Bureau of Reclamation is now predicting that the water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead along the river may drop so low that the turbines at the dams are going to stop even being able to produce power like later this year. It's called dead pool. It's a very grim term, but apt.
RASCOE: Oh, my goodness. So, I mean, all of this has extraordinary environmental consequences, but that sounds like it's also going to have some big economic consequences.
SIEGLER: Totally. I mean, the Colorado River alone supplies drinking water to, like, 40 million people, also countless farms that grow all the produce we eat, especially in the winter in the Imperial Valley of California. And up here where I am in the Pacific Northwest, we get a lot of our power from hydro, and so low river flows are very concerning along the Columbia River. But I think the possibility of a smoky summer is pretty tops on everyone's minds.
I was on a reporting trip up in Montana this past week, and I met Andy Liedberg, who owns a brewery next to the Big Sky ski resort. It's been a tough winter for the ski industry, and Liedberg told me they're facing some tough economic headwinds now going into spring. Like, low rivers mean not much whitewater rafting or fishing and the likelihood of a lot of wildfire smoke.
ANDY LIEDBERG: You have to look at everything, even gas prices this summer, you know? If gas prices don't come down, people aren't driving around, you know, and it's like, we need, like, that traffic of, like, people coming in or out of West Yellowstone or just coming here for vacation. And if it's too expensive, then there's less travel.
SIEGLER: So, Ayesha, the winter that wasn't, as we're all calling it out here, is now causing a lot of concerns for what's coming ahead in spring and summer.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Kirk Siegler in Boise. Thank you so much for joining us.
SIEGLER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
