Western Drought

[Norske3]

web page (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6207423/)

[Bruce Hooke]

Interesting...and more than a bit scary.

[John of Phoenix]

Hopefully they're wrong. We've had some relief recently and expecting some rain again today and tomorrow. We're at August's rain level already. The desert mountains are so green it looks like Ireland around here. Looks great now, but it'll turn to kindling for the summer fire season.

[George Roberts]

The web page is from Oct 8, 04.

I hear the water level is rising and that you should visit now if you want to see the lower sections.

[captain's gig]

Many scientists fear that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are also contributing to warming and Cook's team noted that "if elevated aridity in the western US is a natural response to climate warming, then any trend toward warmer temperatures in the future could lead to a serious long-term increase in aridity over western North America.

[seafox]

it is intresting that he claims that the drought lasted from 900 ad to 1300 ad the earlyer date is the time the masaverde anastasi started to build their pleblos and join into villages where before hand they had lived in individual pit houses scattered about. one thought is that by living in a village they had plenty of hands to channel the summer showers running offf the slickrock to plenty of fields since they did not build storage resivours. areas lacking slickrock to produce flash floods continued to have scattered pit houses and the indians there planted a deeper rooting type of corn.

the cliff dwelling became popular in the 1100s and started to be abandant around 1225 with the last of them being abandant around 1275 the drought being deepest in the 1250 to 1300 time period. one problem with this being totally a precipitation problem is that by the 1200s allmost all of the forest had been striped from the masa tops for building and fuil. besides doing away with wild game it also ment that winter snows melted quicker water ran off quicker the ground dried out quicker springs dried up sooner and erosion from both wind and rain damaged fields and eroaded gullys lowering the water table.

possable the abandment of the 4 corners region in 1275 gave the land a chance to recover so that rains that came were conserved as vegitation came back and then when /if it grew moister after 1300 the land was able to use the increased precipitation

on the other hand climite in europe was not really warm through out the 400 years it proable peaked around 985 when eric the red went out to settle greenland 997 was a year noted for cold and storms while the climite held up through the 1000s there after it streadly got colder through the 1100s and 1200s. by 1300 it was reported that tradigng ships some years could not reach greeland for the drift ice. the western settlement was abandant around this time due to the weather and the expanding inuet (escamo) population comming south

I guess that was a really long way to say I don't think the warmer europe equells drought in the american west is a slam dunk

on the other hand we should dam the missippie like we have done the tennesse the ohio and the colorado.

my personalchoice would be a 600 fool high dam at battonrouge to back the river up all the way to ciaro and another 300 foot dam there so that excess wter from the ohio can flow west up the misouri then pump it up the plat acrost the great devide desert near soth pass and thus down the green and colorado rivers to water california arizona and nevada. if we are nice we might even let mexico have some
jeffery

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

Hey Sea,
If you dam the streams that you proposed they would inundate portions of the watershead that feed those streams. Since much of this watershead is prime eastern farmland and what you want to water is desert there may be a better plan available.
Why not explain to all those desert dwellers that we are working on a way to drink scenery but it is not yet perfected. In the meantime the best we can do is point out that where the rain and snow falls is where the water is. Since moving people has a lot less impact on the ecology that is the way we have to go.

Charlie

[JimD]

The Pacific North West could be looking at a bad summer due to this unusually warm, dry winter that is just ending. Saw a report on the Weather Channel on tv that says there's only a fraction of the normal snowpack in Washington State and British Columbia.

[Meerkat]

Seattle, at least is in decent shape WRT water - city water mangagers started conserving run off back in January and reservoir levels are near normal. IIRC Cascade snowpack is at .26 of normal.

The 'burbs that Seattle sells water to under normal circumstances may suffer dire consequences this summer though. They typically resort to shallow wells that have low capacity and are prone to contamination when Seattle water is unavailable.

One joker in the deck is that it's not implausible that we'll end up having a cold, damp summer to compensate for the dry winter. It's not at all unheard of around here.

The critical danger is fire if we have a hot dry summer.

[Hal Forsen]

Meanwhile in Sunny So Cal we are at about 300% of our usual rainfall totals, it's raining now and a larger storm is in the forecast for next week.
AND!! we have been inundated with these monsters http://www.hookup690.com/images/bigsquid.jpg
dominating the local fishcounts and washing up on the local beaches in significant numbers.
HF

[Norske3]

I wonder how old it is...what if its only few months old. :eek:
Ain't "evolution" amazing!...thats a true water jet powered submarine...bet the the Navy doesn't have one those yet... :D ...and it never has to surface to refuel.

[ 03-19-2005, 06:26 PM: Message edited by: Norske3 ]

[seafox]

hey chuck if I were the person inchargeof the missippie I would run the dike all they way north in a straight line just out side the meanders it wouldn't drownthat much farm land and the desert soils actually are more productive than the eastern soils esp when the fields are much larger. the tributarys would have to be pumped up into the "missippie resivour but this could be acomplished by lining the 600 mile dike on either side with wind mills. the same sysem would pump the water up hill up the plat river
think of all the jobs this project would create
jeffery