‘Snow droughts’ will soon become more common in the western U.S.
Nowadays there’s about a 7 percent chance that snowy areas in the western U.S. will get two really bad snow years in a row—years with snowpack lower than a quarter of the long-term average. But within a few decades, if climate change continues apace, those bookending “snow droughts” could occur about 40 percent of the time, according to work published in August in Geophysical Research Letters.