Drought in the West

[Drew]

I have never seen such a drought throughout the intermountain west. Eastern Oregon received virtually no snow all winter. Utah, Western Colorado, Western Wyoming and Eastern Idaho are all in the same boat. As a fisheries biologist I am scared shitless for this upcoming summer from that perspective. The Colorado River Basin is seeing record low flows and the BOR is going to pull 500,000 acre ft of water from Flaming Gorge in order to prop up the power generation capabilities at Lake Powell.

As an upland game guy, I am really scared at what this will do to the chukar, sage grouse, sharptail grouse and Huns this year. It also sets the stage for an extreme wildfire season throughout the states above.


Drew

 

[GladHunter]

Hopefully a there will be some extra moisture with the La Nina/El Nino transition that's expected. Here in Iowa it's a little dry right now, but the trend the last two years has been good.

 

[Quailnerd]

I have never seen such a drought throughout the intermountain west. Eastern Oregon received virtually no snow all winter. Utah, Western Colorado, Western Wyoming and Eastern Idaho are all in the same boat. As a fisheries biologist I am scared shitless for this upcoming summer from that perspective. The Colorado River Basin is seeing record low flows and the BOR is going to pull 500,000 acre ft of water from Flaming Gorge in order to prop up the power generation capabilities at Lake Powell.

As an upland game guy, I am really scared at what this will do to the chukar, sage grouse, sharptail grouse and Huns this year. It also sets the stage for an extreme wildfire season throughout the states above.


Drew

We moved our annual float trip in a Colorado from June 1 to April due to water levels.. it’s scary dry. El Niño is supposedly on the way but damn it’s dry up there. What little snow they had is gone, runoff normally happens in may

 

[gim]

The west experienced their warmest, driest winter on record in many areas due to a stagnant dome of high pressure parked over the region that didn't move for months. Snowpack was almost non-existent.

My parents went to Arizona for the month of March and it was nearly 100 degrees there the whole time. It nearly ruined the entire trip. Usually it's about 80 there in March.

It's gonna get ugly in many areas west of the Mississippi this summer in terms of water shortages.

 

[airmedic1]

Eastern Wyoming and Colorado, western Kansas and Nebraska are in the same boat. The last time we had an inch of rain where I live in Nebraska was last June. We haven't had any snow and so far no rain this spring. The pheasant population was just starting to come back around here but it doesn't look good so far this year.
Wildfires have already been an issue here, we had the ~650,000 acre Morrill County fire plus several other smaller ones.
It's going to be financially difficult in this area as well, no rain means no grass and no hay which means ranchers are going to have to sell off their cattle.