Study Declares California’s 2023 Winter a ‘Freak Event’

Many factors contributed to the West Coast of the U.S. witnessing a wild and intense winter that ended in April of 2023. California’s snowpack was sitting at a historic high by that date and all season long we were told that we should get used to such extremes thanks to climate change. According to a new study published in the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, that statement might tell the story of some extreme weather events but we shouldn’t expect climate change to supercharge our snowfall totals moving forward.

“There’s a common narrative with climate change that extreme weather events are getting more extreme,” lead author Adrienne Marshall, an assistant professor of geology and geological engineering at Colorado School of Mines, said in a statement. “But with snow deluge, we’re not seeing that’s the case,” Marshall added. “Instead, what we’re seeing across the western U.S. is that snow deluges decline, too.”

Marshall’s study chalked the 2023 winter snowpack up to a freak occurrence, finding that it was a one-in-54-year event when accounting for the April 1 snow-water equivalent readings in their data. Researchers used the term “snow deluge” to refer to once-in-20-year heavy snowfalls that are both cold enough and wet enough to maintain the deep snowpack seen in 2023. Even within a sample of other “snow deluge” years, they say 2023 was a major anomaly — one that wiped away a decades-long drought for the Golden State. It was such an extreme year, in fact, that it edged out a 100-year-old mark for snow-water equivalent.

The study then calculated that one-in-20-year snow deluges will be 58 percent smaller in terms of snow-water equivalent by the end of the century. And while the focus on these snow deluge years was primarily to learn about the impacts of heavy snowfall and water content years on droughts and infrastructure, the information also applies to skiing and riding. Researchers pointed out that snow deluges can extend ski seasons like we saw for much of the West Coast deep into 2023. But infrastructure and preparedness can also mean that heavy snowfall might curtail seasons in some areas, they said.

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