Moscow’s diminished snowfall this season, though it appears alarming, is nothing to worry about in the long run.
This late into the winter season, one would usually expect to see snow stuck to the ground. Ask any local and they’d probably say the season begins in October and stays until February. Contrary to years past, the area hasn’t seen many significant snowfalls so far.
Despite what appears to be a concerning lack of snow, the amount the area has already is near it’s yearly average, according to UI Professor of Hydrology Timothy Link.
“The amount of precipitation this year has been almost spot-on average,” Link said. “We’ve had slightly warmer conditions and there was a somewhat minor rain on snow event, but that was pretty much the reason.”
While the numbers seem to indicate a typical amount of precipitation, Moscow should’ve expected more than what it’s gotten due to the type of year it is, a La Niña year.
La Niña’s occur when water temperature in the tropical Pacific is colder than normal and eastward moving winds and ocean currents bring that water to the surface, a process known as upwelling, according to National Geographic.
“For our latitudes, La Niña’s usually equate to wetter and colder conditions, so that’s what’s a little odd. It doesn’t really make sense to say that we are on average because that is not typical for the year that we are having,” Link said. “Right now, the long-term forecast is for colder and wetter conditions in next three months.”
According to the Idaho State Climatologist and UI Associate Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering Russell Qualls, we may see some of that late-winter precipitation in the mountains rather than in Moscow.
“Even if we have more rainfall rather than snowfall down here, the mountains can still get some good snowpack late in the season,” Qualls said. “It’s often a little hard to predict whether it ended up being a low snowpack year or not until the end of the winter.”
It’s hard to attribute the slightly unnormal winter season to a global pattern, according to Link. Most global warming research points to lower elevations increasing in temperature and shifting from snow to rain. However, it’s unclear how precipitation will be affected.
“Half of our global climate models predict wetter conditions, and half show dryer conditions, it’s not really clear,” Link said. “We are on the fringe of predicted storm tracks. Some of the climate models predict storm tracks going a little north and some predict the storm tracks going more south.”
Despite these concerns, there’s not much that can stop this new trend. Even if carbon emissions completely stopped today, it would take an upwards of 100 years before we saw a noticeable change, Link said.
While it’s unclear how future winters on the Palouse will act, the science seems to point to warmer winters.
Carter Kolpitcke can be reached at [email protected] or @carterkolpitcke on Twitter