Comment by subsubzero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by subsubzero | Hacker News Reader

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This is total fiction, Colorado as a whole has been getting way more snow per year on average in the past 15 years(except the 1990s which were very snowy) than at any time in the past 120 years, I know I live in Colorado and crunched the numbers myself. I pulled the numbers from the NOAA gov site. I have both rain and snow totals so as you can see mother nature is doing her part, its just that the population has exploded here in the past 15 years(15% or 800,000 new people since 2010) and that is what is driving down the water supply. See data by decade below:

Snow Totals - taken from https://psl.noaa.gov/boulder/bouldersnow.html

1900's 72.34 avg

1910's 66.19 avg

1920's 63.83 avg

1930's 54.65 avg

1940's 87.85 avg

1950's 84.45 avg

1960's 77.22 avg

1970's 81.2 avg

1980's 65.06 avg

1990's 98.32 avg

2000's 84.25 avg

2010's 94.79 avg

2020's 97.52 avg over 4 years not 10

rain totals taken from - https://psl.noaa.gov/boulder/Boulder.mm.precip.html

1900's 19.21 avg

1910's 18.12 avg

1920's 18.61 avg

1930's 16.46 avg

1940's 21.72 avg

1950's 18.49 avg

1960's 17.8 avg

1970's 18.35 avg

1980's 19.71 avg

1990's 22.68 avg

2000's 19.04 avg

2010's 22.25 avg

2020's 19.84 avg over 4 years not 10

one city on the front range that isn't even in the colorado river watershed is hardly indicative of the snow pack / snowfall inside that watershed. The inflows into lake Powell are a much better equivalent for the entire watershed and do show a decline. https://graphs.water-data.com/lakepowell/ though that doesn't show diversions / how much is being caught in upstream reservoirs. and the snotel graphs for the watersheds in the colorado basin are a much better source https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/support/states/CO/produ...

I chose Boulder as it has very good record keeping(and it goes way back) and is a good bellwether for the state, plus a number of key government climate labs are based here. So its a solid data point. If I had more time I would crunch numbers from a array of other cities like Breckenridge, Aspen, Colorado springs, and Grand Junction, the former two may or may not have great data from before the 1950s'.

I love the attention to detail. As another commenter pointed out, while this is perhaps true for Boulder, you'll have to acknowledge not only that Boulder experiences a rather distinct climate from the rest of Colorado, and that Boulder is hydrologically disconnected from the Colorado river basin, which is the subject of this discussion.

Furthermore, as the OP's article alludes to, snow _amount_ is only one component that contributes to water availability, particularly its timing. Larger amounts of snow that melt very fast in the spring create a novel regime that our current systems aren't well-suited to support, for example.

By "Colorado as a whole", do you mean "Boulder in particular"?

Residential water use is tiny compared to water used to grow things mostly cattle feed, Primarily alfalfa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XusyNT_k-1c

The reason for the water shortages is not more people it’s a complete and utter mismanagement of the watershed

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