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Scientists predict a Tahoe without snow

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateOne week, it’s fires; the next, it’s feet upon feet of snow.In the middle of January, high winds and dry conditions .Now, with a huge amount of water. In the Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe region, forecasters are calling for by the end of this week.This kind of dramatic shift from fire to fire hose is something California is already used to. But the tick-tock between extremes &nbsp;— or what climate researcher Daniel Swain calls “precipitation whiplash” — will only become more exaggerated as the climate crisis plays out, now and in the near future.As the year’s first major storm arrived in Lake Tahoe, meteorologists and climate scientists convened on the South Shore this week for the 24th , a leading nationwide conference about weather. Due to the pandemic, attendance was limited to 25 people, with panels and speakers livestreamed on Facebook. The conference opened Monday morning with a panel about climate change in California and Lake Tahoe.Panelists forecast a grim outlook for the rest of the century. Climate models predict that storms like the one arriving this week will deliver more rain than snow to Lake Tahoe, a warming trend that will wreak havoc on future ski days.But it wasn’t all talk about the future. According to the panel, the impacts of the climate crisis are already unfolding right now — see last week’s headlines about wildfires in January.“The future, I think, is here in California and Nevada,” said Swain, who is a climate scientist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Swain opened the panel on climate impacts and solutions. “Climate change has arrived. We’re already living in a different place than when 20th century policies, and water management infrastructure and flood control infrastructure developed.”Swain described a future California that’s both wetter and drier. It’s a paradox with fewer storms offset by extended dry seasons. But when storms do come, they will be more intense. Winter, or the “wet season,” will become narrower and narrower, bookended by longer, drier falls and springs. That also means that fire season will extend, with the climate crisis driving larger and more intense wildfires.This is already playing out across California, down to the local level. In Tahoe, the climate crisis has triggered changes impacting the entire region, from the highest elevations of the mountains to the bottom of the lake itself.Tahoe is a microcosm of the climate crisis in California, added panelist Dorian Fougères, the acting deputy director of the California Tahoe Conservancy. The conservancy is a state agency that manages around 6,500 acres in the Basin. Alongside the region’s sensitive ecosystems and biodiversity, Tahoe is dealing with a housing crisis and huge amounts of traffic. Fougères gave an updated number on Tahoe’s annual visitors: 24 million people come to the Basin every year, fueling a $6 billion recreation economy. (It’s worth noting, however, that the visitation figure fluctuates depending on the source and method of counting. Regardless, Tahoe receives more visitors than the most popular national parks.)“If you can adapt here, where you have these sensitive resources, a ton of people, these urban issues, you hopefully can adapt anywhere in California,” Fourgères said at the panel.By 2100, Tahoe is expecting a 3.6 to 9 degree temperature increase.“That means summers in Tahoe in August will be as hot as San Jose,” Fougères said. “That is extreme heat for Tahoe.”The climate crisis could turn Tahoe’s blue into a shade of green by disrupting the cyclical process that keeps Tahoe’s water so clear. Historically, the lake goes through a mixing process in the winter, when the top layers of water sink to the bottom. That cycle is fundamental to keeping the lake so blue. But warmer summers and warmer winters will disrupt that cycle, Fougères said.“It could become just another green lake by the end of the century,” Fougères said. “What is Lake Tahoe if it’s not blue? That’s something to ponder on our drives and travels.”The California Tahoe Conservancy engages in a wide range of conservation projects, including two major initiatives to restore some of the Basin’s most critical wetlands and meadows. Restoration projects are underway for the , which is the largest watershed in the Basin, and Meeks Bay.The Meeks Bay project is a partnership with the Washoe Tribe. As in the rest of California, wildfires are anticipated to worsen dramatically, not only straining public health and disaster response infrastructure but also threatening tribal lands. In December, the conservancy gave the Washoe Tribe a $380,454 grant to restore Meeks Meadow, one of the largest meadows in the Basin. The Washoe traditionally call the meadow Máyala Wáta. As the climate crisis lowers Tahoe’s water tables and triggers a shift in ecology, meadows are shrinking, Fougères said. The Meeks Meadow restoration project will remove encroaching trees, reintroduce cultural burning practices and also give the tribe an opportunity to transfer cultural and ecological knowledge from elders to younger generations.“What are Tahoe’s forests without meadows?” Fougères said.Another question might be: What if Tahoe’s mountains aren’t white?This week, a series of winter storms will drop feet of snow across Tahoe. But in the coming years, precipitation at the shores of Lake Tahoe will continue to shift from snow to almost entirely rain.&nbsp;That means an increase in floods in the Tahoe Basin. Fougère predicted floods will breach the dam in Tahoe City one or two times a decade. The shift from snow to rain will also bump peak runoff — or when the snowpack melts and the watershed drains into California’s lower elevations — five months earlier, from June to January.The climate crisis will also eviscerate Tahoe’s ski industry.Meteorologists have been forecasting this week's storm event since the middle of the month, as soon as the models started to hint at the possibility. As the storm draws closer, the precision of forecasts has sharpened. Bryan Allegretto, who covers Tahoe for the uber popular storm blog , says the storm will begin to move in on Tuesday evening, picking up pace through the week. Heavy snow will fall on Thursday. By Friday morning, the mountains should look quite different than the beginning of the week, with snow totals ranging from 32 to 77 inches, depending on location and elevation, with some forgiveness built in just in case the storm veers unexpectedly. Allegretto’s forecasts are famously specific to Tahoe’s &nbsp;micro-climates, which is why he has so much variation.By the end of this century, however, those forecasts won’t be so exciting.Snow levels will rise to more than 9,500 feet by 2100, Fougères said. Most ski areas in Tahoe sit between 6,000 and 9,000 foot elevations. He said that translates to a $268 million loss annually, split across the region’s dozen ski resorts. The ski resorts are already investing in climate adaptation, like more efficient snowmaking systems, wind and solar power, and expanded summertime recreation. But the loss of skiing looms.“What is Tahoe without skiing?” Fougères said.In the meantime, I suppose we all better go skiing while snow is still falling.More Lake Tahoe News———For weekly updates, interviews and profiles from a Tahoe insider, sign up for our Tahoe newsletter .

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateOne week, it’s fires; the next, it’s feet upon feet of snow.In the middle of January, high winds and dry conditions .Now, with a huge amount of water. In the Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe region, forecasters are calling for by the end of this week.This kind of dramatic shift from fire to fire hose is something California is already used to. But the tick-tock between extremes &nbsp;— or what climate researcher Daniel Swain calls “precipitation whiplash” — will only become more exaggerated as the climate crisis plays out, now and in...

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Scientists predict a Tahoe without snow

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