By Bob Spiwak
After almost a week of warm sunshine, there’s a high overcast today (Monday). The snow is going away and revealing the first layer of ice, then more snow and at the base, more ice — still 3 inches thick in places. Even using the axe end of a Pulaski barely dents it. More sun in the forecast and possible rain should help shuck that stuff.
Meanwhile in the upper reaches of Harts Pass, the snow depth is at 74 inches, down 4 inches from last week, while the water content is up from 34.2 to 36.1 inches.
Amy Snover’s family lives at Wolf Creek and she is director of the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington. In a discussion titled “What a Record-Low Snowpack means For Summer in the Northwest,” she stated that this year’s minimal snow is an anomaly worth noting:
“It’s a really useful year in the sense that this is the kind of year that all the climate models tell us to expect. The future looks like this … less snow because of warmer temperatures but not necessarily less precipitation.”
Scott Pattee, a water supply specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, took measurements of snow depth at Stevens Pass. “We have about 30 inches … Normally we would have closer to 150 [inches] this time of year,” he said.
Which returns us to our back yard at Harts Pass, where for the past 13 days the temperatures have been above freezing, at times brushing the 40-degree mark, accelerating the melt. The implications are not all bad, as with the climate warming there may be more precipitation in the form of rain, say some. However, the snow is a storage unit. The rain comes and goes.
Last Friday night I went outside and the full moon was just rising over Boesel Hill to our northeast. Overhead a jet, unseen, was headed in the opposite direction and the moonlight turned the contrail into a brilliant white line across the sky. What really made the scene spectacular was a bright light, probably Venus, just above the contrail. It has been a good week for sky watching, even if you are ignorant of nomenclature beyond the moon.
Eric Burr sent a report of floral progress in the valley as we approach the first day of spring. Above the climbing rocks he found sage buttercups and at Spokane Gulch were spring beauties, a week ahead of the “normal” resurgence. However, no yellow bells, but evidence of lots of hikers and snowshoers and even one skier.
An additional sign of spring is termination of trail grooming, at least for Lliam Donohue. He’ll do one more operation on the Rendezvous this week and that will be it for his annual stint on the groomer.
And finally, actually at last, a pair of mallard ducks flew into our pond yesterday afternoon. We think these are the usual couple who are always the vanguard of more of their ilk and the imminent wood ducks who vacation here every year. Life is good in West Boesel.
