"Staggeringly Low" Snowpack Across Most Of American West Already In Place; Now, Record-Crushing Heat Moves East From CA
An early-season heat wave is descending across the Western United States, likely to bring record-shattering temperatures to much of the region. Temperatures already climbed into the 90s on Thursday in states such as Arizona and California and are expected to peak on Friday before the dome expands to the Mountain West and parts of Oregon next week. The abnormal weather is largely caused by a high-pressure system trapping heat from unusually warm Pacific Ocean waters.
These conditions follow the warmest winter on record and significant drought across much of the Western U.S. As a result, states in the region have seen staggeringly low levels of snowpack this year, leaving officials concerned about low water availability and high fire risk heading into spring and summer. The heat wave will only make this situation worse, experts say.
“It’s already dry in the West, from a snow perspective, and a lot of communities and agricultural [enterprises] depend on water from those natural reservoirs,” said Cornell University climate scientist Flavio Lehner, who has monitored water supply in the Southwest for about a decade. “By the time April 1 comes around, which is often sort of like a watershed moment where people start to really plan for allocations in the summer, it’s going to look pretty bad in a lot of places in the West.”
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Over the next two weeks, some areas in the Southwest will see temperatures around 25 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal for this time of year. “This is effectively a full-on summer heatwave in March,” climate scientist Daniel Swain, an expert on extreme weather at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, wrote in a post Friday on X. On Thursday afternoon, residents in downtown Los Angeles were thrown into this pseudo-summer when the city center reached a whopping 92 degrees Fahrenheit. Triple digits are expected early next week in southeastern California and southern Arizona, with Phoenix likely to see its first 100-degree day of the year earlier than ever recorded. Milder, mountainous states such as Colorado could reach the 80s in certain areas.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13032026/march-heat-wave-western-united-states/
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