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Climate of 2004 - March
Montana
Drought
National Climatic Data Center, 15 April 2004
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A possible contributing factor to the severity of the multi-year drought in the West is a longer-term trend to warmer winters and springs and earlier starts to the spring snowmelt season. Observational evidence indicates that on average spring snowmelt now begins weeks earlier than it did only 50 years ago in states such as Washington, Oregon and Montana. The earlier snowmelt dates are also occurring in many areas where the average seasonal snowfall has also decreased. The end result is less runoff into streams and reservoirs further straining water resources. These issues were recently discussed by Dr. Kelly Redmond of the Western Regional Climate Center and Dr. Steve Running of the University of Montana's Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group in an April 8 issue of the Billings (Montana) Gazette (http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/04/08/build/state/25-climate-change.inc).
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NCDC /
Clim. Monitoring /
Climate-2004 /
Mar /
U.S. Regional Drought /
Search /
Help
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2004/mar/st024dv00pcp200403.html
Downloaded Sunday, 06-Jul-2008 01:35:22 EDT
Last Updated Tuesday, 29-Nov-2005 14:04:59 EST by Richard.Heim@noaa.gov
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