LOGAN – Utah’s winters are getting warmer according to Utah State University professor Robert Davies who said in a February report that particularly in lower and mid elevations snowpack has declined over the last 40 years.
In a report issued last week USU’s Utah Climate Center, revisiting a 2012 study, verified troubling trends for Utah’s water availability.
Jon Meyer, assistant state climatologist with the Utah Climate Center said that the 10-year old study revealed over the last half century Utah’s winter time precipitation was changing quite dramatically. In addition he said with the warming climate it was found the snowpack season was being reduced on both ends.
In other words snowpack was arriving later in the fall and ending earlier in the spring,
yet they were seeing more water being delivered through the winter time months.
“We’re now seeing less precipitation and we are seeing greater amounts of it arriving in the form of rainfall, which when you have the snowpack and it’s raining on top of that it can really supercharge the problem of snowpack collapse,” Meyer said.
Meyer said looking forward in time expectations are for these trends to get worse.