By George Sibley

This year’s Headwaters Conference at Western State College posed an interesting topic. Entitled “Small Steps, Big Stories: Climate Solutions in the Headwaters,” the conference explored the challenge of developing positive, life-affirming “cultural stories” for addressing the big problems the society faces. Read the rest of this article

by Joe Stone

Colorado’s temperatures will rise over 4°F by the year 2050. Mountain snowpack will melt earlier, and stream flows in the Colorado River Basin will diminish by five to 20 percent. These numbers, highlighted in October, 2008 at the Governor’s Conference on Managing Drought and Climate Risk, are documented in a report titled Climate Change in Colorado. Published by Western Water Assessment,* the report identifies several issues that will challenge Colorado’s ability to meet water demands as temperatures increase. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

All the global “meltdowns,” economic and otherwise, have been temporarily, subtly trumped here by the onset of the annual local meltdown that signals “Springtime in the Rockies” – that interval of mud, gray skies, and soggy erratic weather during which, that old song notwithstanding, “I’ll be coming back to you” only if you happen to live in Cuernavaca, or at least Canon City, someplace without dirty snow. Nonetheless, even that onset of mud and sogginess generates an involuntary uptick in the human spirit, no matter what the news from the larger world. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Salida’s reputation as an art town has apperntaly extended to the nearby one-time railroad siding of Barrel, where several foundations remain from the days when narrow-gauge cars of limestone were transferred to standard-gauge cars until 1956. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

The snowpack never completely melted this summer at the Snowmass ski area, where a mound of snow 20 feet high survived even the 80-plus days of summer. The mound is the remnant of a massive jump that was part of a snowboard terrain park built last winter. Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Climate – March 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

A prompt, decisive man, no breath

Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”

John Greenleaf Whittier, Snowbound

Read the rest of this article

Column by Hal Walter

Climate – February 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

AFTER AN EXTENDED, warmer-than-usual fall, cold weather struck the Wet Mountains with a vengeance in mid-December. By the time the holidays rolled around, Heaven had indeed frozen over with nighttime temperatures regularly dropping below zero and hovering in the low single digits on the warmer nights. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – December 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

Contemplating the winter ahead, National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Ramey tells the Steamboat Pilot & Today that it’s another La Niña winter, which could result in a winter similar to the one two years ago.

“Our studies indicate that the area should get hit with lots of snow in December and early January, like it did two years ago,” he said. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Ed Quillen

Climate – October 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

Seen more sagebrush lately? Do the plants look bigger, too?

That might be a result of the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to a recent study conducted by Colorado State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – February 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

Last month we passed on the predictions of climate scientists, who said this would be an El Niño year. From December into February, the Pacific Northwest would get hammered, and we would be dry. Our snow would come in March and April. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Leslie Willoughby

Climate – October 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Dear Ed,

How wonderful it is to find among your readers several who would take the time to write cogent letters regarding Global Climate Change. While I agreed with Ide Trotter’s recommendations and conclusion that “dependence on imported crude oil should be reduced,” I was confounded to read Ide’s report of the hockey stick graph “refutation.” Read the rest of this article

Essay by Ed Quillen

Climate – August 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

AS I WRITE THIS, Salida has just seen three or four straight days of rain, the strange spectacle of water falling from our sky. Not our usual violent summer thunderstorms, but a long gentle soaker, as though we were in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. And it’s chilly for July; I need to wear a sweater as I sit and type. Thus “Drought Associated with Global Warming” is not a topic that leaps to mind. Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Climate – August 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

CLIMATE — the big global movements of air and water that come down to us in the form of our daily weather — has been much in the news. We’ve always said, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” But, in fact, it seems that every time we’ve climbed into the car to go to the grocery store, or turned on the furnace or a lightbulb, we’ve been unconsciously doing a little something about the weather, incrementally helping to alter the global climate that delivers our local weather — more early snow over here, but less overall; warmer, earlier springs; wetter summers. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – August 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Drought continues to plague many Colorado communities this summer, but in different ways. Fires plagued the southern Rockies, including a huge blaze along La Veta Pass, which shut the highway, and thus affected towns as far away as Alamosa and Poncha Springs. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – June 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

While glaciers across much of the world have been shrinking, four small glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park have been holding their own since the 1930s, according to then-and-now photo comparisons. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – April 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

As winter concludes, Colorado is a study in contrast. While people in small mountain towns like Red Cliff, which is located in the Vail neighborhood, are scrambling to get flood insurance, dust fills the skies 150 miles to the south in the San Luis Valley, where the Great Sand Dunes National Park is located. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

As is so often the case, it’s shaping up as a tale of two winters in Colorado.

Along the I- 70 corridor and north at Steamboat Springs, the stories have been about the abundance of snow. Snow shovelers and plowers are making a good living, although some of them are running out of places to dump it. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – November 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine

Weather in most mountain towns remained warm, seemingly unseasonably so, through September. And experienced local eyes seemed to think the aspen began changing colors later than usual, too.

That jibes with a new report by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. It says that an examination of weather records reveals the last five years were the hottest of the past 110 years across much of the West. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – August 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine

We’re in the wettest time of year in Central Colorado – July and August — when we get about 30% of our annual precipitation in only 17% of our year. “Wettest” is a relative term, since most of our territory is a desert by one standard definition – we get less than 20 inches of precipitation in an average year, and that’s the division between “where normal crops will grow without irrigation” and “where you need a water right unless you like gambling on dryland farming.” Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – July 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine

Droughts are peculiar natural events. You known when a thunderstorm or earthquake starts and ends.

But you don’t know when a drought starts until a few months or years later (a dry month, or even a dry year, doesn’t necessarily mean a drought), and you’re never quite sure when one ends (a wet month or wet year could be an aberration). Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0878424733[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Climate – May 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine

Weather Extremes of the West
by Tye W. Parzybok
Published in 2005 by Mountain Press Publishing Co.
ISBN 0-87842-473-3 Read the rest of this article

Essay by Allen Best

Climate – March 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine

ARIDITY IN THE AMERICAN Southwest has always been axiomatic, nearly a point of pride. It’s how we define the region. But evidence trickling in suggests that we have not yet begun to appreciate water scarcity. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0465011217[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Climate – November 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

Floods, Famines, and Emperors – El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations
by Brian Fagan
Published in 1999 by Basic Books
ISBN 0-465-01121-7 Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – October 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

We’ve encountered many theories about the drought, ranging from global warming to disruptions with El Niño.

And then, while looking up something else, we found this in the minutes of the Jan. 16, 2003, meeting of the Front Range Resource Advisory Council of the federal Bureau of Land Management at Holy Cross Abbey in Cañon City: Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – August 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

As the climate warms, vegetation will shift, and in response so will the mammals that depend upon that vegetation. Scientists report this is already happening, with species generally moving northward and breeding and flowering earlier in the year. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – June 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

As Mark Twain didn’t say, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” (Although this is often attributed to Twain, it actually came from Charles Dudley Warner, his collaborator on The Gilded Age.) Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Climate – February 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

THIRTY BELOW in Gunnison again! Minus 33, according to the Denver TV, so it must be true!

And then there are all those radical thermometers down by the river. So-and-so had 44 below! I heard a minus 46! Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – February 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

After a several-year drought, the ski areas, cities, and water districts of Colorado are spending more than $1 million this year to seed clouds in hopes of inducing more snow. But does it really work? Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – February 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

For students of classical music, or religious tyranny, 1685 was a banner year. Composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born that year, as was George Frederick Handel. The French king outlawed Protestantism, while the Swedish king banned Jews. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – July 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

Livestock growers, water districts, and others in the Gunnison area have found religion.

After last year’s drought, they invested $75,000 in a cloud-seeding operation for this past winter. Whether by coincidence or by cause-effect, this past winter produced at least so-so snowstorms. Based on that turnaround, the various organizations are now planning on a bigger, better cloud-seeding operation. Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Climate – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE ARGUMENT about evolution goes on and on. Is the earth and its abundance of life the product of “an intelligent design,” a “vast eternal plan,” or is it just the fractal unfolding of an exfoliation of things that started happening in the random generation of possibilities in a universe where who knows what else is going on? Read the rest of this article

Letter from Marianne Katte

Climate – May 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

I read Hal Walter’s latest piece on the winter of his discontent and was just about blown away. Even worse then my winter, huh? Wish I could do something. Even though I now live in a temperate climate, this winter was exceptionally cold. Now we have a few wonderful Colorado days but the nights are nippy, so the azaleas got nipped and no toads, frogs, and salamanders. They just don’t move unless it is at least 5º C. Period. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – August 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Leadville’s mild climate?

This summer has seemed hotter than usual, with Salida reporting a 96° high on July 7.

But we’re not quite ready to blame it on global warming, since that’s not the record. According to the Colorado Climate Center at CSU in Fort Collins, the Salida record high is 100° on Aug. 7, 1902, and the cold extreme of -35° occurred on Jan. 2, 1919. Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Climate – December 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

IT’S SNOWING THIS MORNING — not real hard here in Gunnison, but I can guess what it’s doing upvalley, in Crested Butte or up on Monarch Pass.

It snowed all day in Crested Butte yesterday, and having lived there once, I can remember what that was like — going to bed with visions of powder plumes dancing in my wee spinning head. Spinning because when it really snows in a mountain town, you usually find yourself hanging out in a bar with everyone else that’s snowstruck, just watching it come down. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – July 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

It’s dry. How dry? The June 1 snowpack report from the National Resources Conservation Service put Colorado’s snowpack at only 14% of average, the lowest since they started keeping records.

That’s partly because last winter had below-normal snowfall, a Read the rest of this article

Poem by Hal Walter

Climate – May 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Bluebirds back early

in January

bright blue males flitting from

fencepost to fencepost as

I run along the road Read the rest of this article

Column by Hal Walter

Climate – May 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

I’M OFTEN ASKED this time of year: “When will it be spring?” The answer — after nine Wet Mountain winters — is “never.”

Oh sure, there’s the soft week in May when the aspens finally leaf out. But a procession of snowstorms alternating with windstorms is pretty much what you’re in for from the Spring Equinox until Ma Nature is good and tired of it. One year the last measurable snowfall of the year came on June 9. The following day was almost hot. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – September 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine

At least the animals haven’t started to line up in pairs…

The meteorologists keep telling us that overall, this is a pretty normal year for Colorado weather. And maybe it is in a statistical sense, but it sure hasn’t felt that way on the ground.

Winter and spring were dry, and then in late April and early May, state river basins went from near-drought to normal storage and flow conditions. Read the rest of this article

Column by Hal Walter

Climate – February 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine

IN THE EARLY DAYS of the New West we didn’t blame El Niño for our weather-related hardships. We were simply too busy digging out from a “hard winter” or “heavy snow year.”

That was back when winter was an old man, not a little boy. Those of us who had lived in this country for any amount of time sought out homes on county-plowed roads, and squirreled away extra food, firewood, and camp-stove fuel because we knew it wasn’t a matter of if — but rather when and how much — it would snow. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – February 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine

Perhaps the best that can be said of February is that it is short, although it is long enough to have a legal holiday, Presidents’ Day on the 16th, and an unofficial holiday, Groundhog Day on the 2nd.

As the story goes, the hibernating groundhog emerges from his burrow on this day. If the sun is shining — that is, he can see his shadow — then six more weeks of winter loom, and the critter returns to his burrow for more sleep. Otherwise, he presumably gets a cup of coffee and rises for the season. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – August 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine

We’re not cool. We’re a Disaster Area.

Although afternoon thunderstorms are no longer a novelty, they haven’t cured the effects of a dry winter and spring — a drought. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Hal Walter

Climate – July 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine

Wet Mountain Valley ain’t so wet this summer

This summer the Wet Mountain Valley and surrounding ranges just aren’t wet at all. In fact they’re drier than a Baptist wedding. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – November 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine

As we went to press, the days were clear and warm, and if history is any guide, then this winter should be among the warmest on record.

Why? Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Climate – May 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine

It’s nearly time to quit drooling over the seed catalogs and get out there with shovel, hoe, rake, and spud bar. But when is it safe to plant? Read the rest of this article

Article by Ed Quillen

Climate – May 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine

This is when even devout non-gardeners like me drool uncontrollably over seed catalogs. Every four-color variety of squash, bean or melon looks comely, even luscious — and then there’s the fine print:

GROWING SEASON 170 DAYS. Read the rest of this article