The Western U.S. might be seeing its last snowy winters
When a fire started spreading quickly in Boulder County, Colorado, on December 30, destroying nearly 1,000 homes as residents fled, the ground was dry. This was unusual: Boulder typically gets around 30 inches of snow between September and December. But last year, it had only a total of 1.7 inches over the same period … It was so warm in Colorado that ski resorts often couldn’t even make fake snow. In California, though heavy snow fell in the Sierra Nevada mountains in December, recent winters have seen extreme drought: Last April, when the snowpack in the Sierras should have been at its highest point, it was at just 4% of the average.