Opinion: California’s plentiful snowpack is no reason for celebration
… This marked the second year in a row with above-average snowfall and was a huge turnaround from conditions at the beginning of 2024, when the snowpack across the state was barely a quarter of the historic average. … The relationship between snowfall and climate change is not as simple as it might first appear. Though rising temperatures will cause some would-be snow to fall as rain, this is partly balanced out by the fact that precipitation will become more intense overall, since warmer air can hold more water vapor. Some parts of Alaska and Northern Canada have seen increases in snowfall over the last 40 years; in these frigid locales the amount of snow is more limited by cold weather, which decreases the amount of moisture in the air.
-Written by Ned Kleiner, a scientist and catastrophe modeler at Verisk.