{"id":62191,"date":"2014-04-07T23:08:57","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T05:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/snowpack-dust-is-trending-upward\/"},"modified":"2014-04-08T05:08:57","modified_gmt":"2014-04-08T05:08:57","slug":"snowpack-dust-is-trending-upward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/snowpack-dust-is-trending-upward\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowpack dust is trending upward"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The San Juan Mountains, as seen Friday from Bloomfield, N.M., hold about 80 percent of average snowpack. Researchers are noting increasing dust storms in Southwest Colorado, and that they threaten to create earlier spring runoffs.<\/span>JERRY McBRIDE\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The good news is that this year\u2019s dust storms have not deposited as much grit on this area\u2019s snowpack as last year\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The bad news: Last year \u201cbroke the sound barrier\u201d for dust deposits, and this year is continuing a decade-long increase.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to the latest measurements by the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies. The Silverton-based organization runs a study for Colorado and regional water-management agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe notable thing is that we are still on that same pace,\u201d Chris Landry, director of the center, said Friday afternoon just after posting the most recent report on www.codos.org. \u201cThat is a pace where the frequency of dust events is much higher than it was 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not retreating back to the 20th century, when the frequency of these events was much lower,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

What it means in terms of how it affects humans is, first of all, very possibly the snowpack will melt sooner than normal.<\/p>\n

Weather to come will still have a large effect, but the bottom line is that when dust settles on the snow\u2019s surface it \u201cdramatically advances\u201d the rate at which snow melts. White snow reflects much of the sun\u2019s energy, but darker-colored dust particles absorb that energy, heat up and contribute to the melting of the snow. That means spring runoffs occur sooner, affecting everyone from farmers and ranchers to river runners.<\/p>\n

Another, perhaps less-obvious effect, is that dust in the snowpack can cause a destabilizing effect in the snowpack, making spring avalanches more likely in the backcountry. There\u2019s little that skiers can do to combat that \u2013 even skiing earlier in the day may not help, Landry said.<\/p>\n

And large dust deposits have a more obvious effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cDust is miserable to ski on,\u201d Landry said. \u201cEssentially, you\u2019re skiing on mud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2003, the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies has kept track of dust events in Senator Beck Basin just to the northwest of Red Mountain Pass. This snow season, five such events have been catalogued in the basin.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re just entering the biggest month for dust storms, Landry said, but so far, it hasn\u2019t been as bad as last year. On April 8, 2013, a dust storm brought a measured 47 grams per square meter of dust. That single event was greater than any other year that\u2019s been measured. Another storm April 15-17, 2013, brought a whopping 9 grams.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year really was a quantum leap in total mass,\u201d Landry said.<\/p>\n

Studies show that most of the dust comes from the greater Colorado Plateau, an area that includes all the Four Corners states. Dust storms are exacerbated by soil conditions (drought, for example) and soil disturbance, Landry said.<\/p>\n

Although 10-plus years of study was not in itself enough to convince Landry of the certainty of a continuing trend toward dustier snowpack, a paper by Janice Brahney of the University of British Columbia did. Brahney\u2019s study \u201cvery clearly verified\u201d a 200 percent increase in dust deposited in western Colorado since the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer paper really validated what was sort of glaring, obvious, but not statistically sound trend in our own dust log,\u201d Landry said. \u201cNow, I do say that this frequency and intensity of these dust storms has definitely increased in the last decades and maybe most dramatically in the last eight to 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall so far this season, the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies categorizes dust deposits as \u201cmoderate to heavy\u201d and snowpack as \u201caverage\u201d for the Senator Beck Basin.<\/p>\n

Snowpack in the basin that includes the Animas, San Juan, Dolores and San Miguel rivers was 82 percent as of Friday, putting it below average.<\/p>\n

johnp@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

not as bad as 2013\u2019s \u2018quantum leap\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[377,13,87,327],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-62191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-avalanche-landslide","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-red-mountain-pass","tag-silverton"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62191"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=62191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}