Aridification Watch

The meteorological winter has only just begun, and the 2023 water year is a mere two months old, so it’s probably too early to be talking about snowpack and precipitation trends. But I’m going to do it anyway because things are getting kind of interesting.

As I’ve noted before, La Niña has returned for a third consecutive winter, a rare occurrence. La Niña strengthens the trade winds along the equator, pushing warm Pacific Ocean water away from South America’s west coast, which then causes cool water to upswell to the surface to replace the warmer waters. This pushes the jet stream northward, bringing drier conditions to the Southwest and moisture and cold to the Northwest. 

At least that’s what usually happens.

So far, though, Western weather hasn’t always followed the rules. What else is new, right? For example:

• The snowpack in the Upper Colorado River watershed is currently just above the median for this time of year, and is quite a bit healthier than on this date in 2021 and 2022—also La Niña years. If current trends continue through the winter it should buoy levels at Lake Powell, or at least keep them from declining so rapidly. Currently the reservoir’s surface is at about 3,527 feet above sea level. On the one hand, that’s 14 feet below what it was at this time last year, which is not so great. On the other hand, levels have held fairly steady since late September thanks in part to a wet fall.

• Southern Arizona experienced its 16th driest November on record, which fits the La Niña pattern. But it was also the coolest November since 2004, in defiance of the pattern. Go figure.

• As if to rub it in, Phoenix, which had a pretty healthy monsoon this summer, just experienced its wettest day in almost a year, receiving .76 inches of rain over a 24-hour period. Tucson, meanwhile, received .69 inches of rain during the first week of December, nearly five times the normal amount for the entire month.

• The rains apparently hammered southwestern New Mexico, as well, as streams and rivers there swelled up to levels usually only seen during summer thunderstorms. The Blue River in Clifton, Arizona, shot up from about 20 cubic feet per second to almost 3,500 cfs in a matter of hours, setting a new high for 2022. Also:

  

  Dave DuBois @NMClimate

  The USGS stream gauge San Francisco River at Glenwood is currently at 3070 CFS. It peaked at 3780 CFS at 10:15am this morning. Past high flow was 280 CFS back in 1993. #nmwater #nmwx

  

  10:56 PM ∙ Dec 5, 2022

  ---

  14Likes5Retweets

• Meanwhile, the Northwest is cool and wet, just as one would expect during a La Niña year. A scan of SNOTEL stations in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana show some stations have more than twice the usual snowpack for this time of year.

Still, the winter is young, and things could change radically. Last winter started out dry in much of Colorado, for example, leading to the late December Marshall Fire near Boulder that wiped out 1,000 homes. Then some monster storms came, forcing everyone to reassess. Then the dryness returned. This year, forecasters are expecting La Niña to mellow or disappear by early spring, so maybe things will return to normal. Whatever that means.

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Mining Monitor

• Canada-based Anfield Resources announced Nov. 29 that it has hired a Utah engineering firm to develop a plan to reactivate the Shootaring Canyon uranium mill, pictured above, which is located in Garfield County, Utah, near Ticaboo and Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell. The company says it hopes to bring the old mill back to life to process ore from its mining properties in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. But don’t get too excited: The mill has been in a zombie state, er standby mode, since 1982. Since then at least three different owners have tried to revive it, including one attempt to use it to reprocess tailings from the Atlas Mill outside of Moab. And environmental watchdogs, most notably Sarah Fields of Uranium Watch, have been trying to get the long-expired license terminated and force reclamation of the mill and any tailings there. A lot depends on what happens with uranium prices and federal protectionist policies that could benefit domestic production. At least one investment analyst is predicting Anfield stocks could go “nuclear” soon due to an apparent resurgence in uranium mining. Or maybe they’re just saying that because the companies are hyping themselves and talking about resuscitating zombified mines and mills without having the resources—Anfield’s financial reports show it losing $5 million per quarter—to actually complete the task. Time will tell.

• Speaking of losing money in mining: The much-ballyhooed effort to revive the Revenue-Virginius silver mine in the San Juan Mountains near Ouray has collapsed rather dramatically. Liz Teitz, of the Ouray County Plaindealer, reports that Ouray Silver Mines is facing $10 million in lawsuits over unpaid bills. The company is in receivership and is seeking a buyer. Last year the company was trying to ramp up operations and promised to employ some 200 people; now it has a skeleton crew of eight. The mining claim was first staked in 1876 and grew to a large operation in the following decades, reportedly delivering profits to its owners into the 1920s. Star Mining purchased the mine in 2011 and began the modern process of bringing it back into production. The effort initially was plagued by accidents and a terrible safety record, which climaxed tragically in 2013 when two miners were killed and 20 injured by carbon monoxide poisoning.

• MAP ALERT: I’ve begun to compile these Mining Monitor dispatches in an interactive map. It’s a work in progress—I have many more things to add—but click here to check it out.

Energy Transition + Public Lands Ticker

The Biden administration says it plans to update its 2012 plan for solar energy on public lands in the Southwest, with an eye toward expediting such developments. The Interior Department didn’t give any details about how it might revamp the plan—that will be determined as the process unfolds in coming months. But a statement said, “… the BLM is considering adding more states, adjusting exclusion criteria and seeking to identify new or expanded areas to prioritize solar deployment.” In the same statement, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland noted her agency is, “committed to expanding clean energy development to address climate change.” The BLM is currently reviewing three utility-scale proposals in southern Arizona that would total a whopping 1 GW of generating capacity (one of the proposals is for a 600 MW solar-plus-storage plant). This undoubtedly will raise concerns among desert lovers and some conservationists who have pushed back against industrializing the West’s public lands with solar panels.

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Big Breakdown Ticker

Enchant Energy, the upstart company that wants to revive the shuttered San Juan Generating Station and eventually do a $1.6-billion carbon capture retrofit on the aging facility, just can’t catch a break. For starters, their San Juan venture is slipping further out of reach. Westmoreland recently announced it had begun reclamation of the San Juan coal mine, which includes sealing it all up, meaning there’s almost no chance a reborn plant could get its coal from there. Meanwhile, Farmington apparently hasn’t made any progress on its bid to take over ownership of the plant to save it from being demolished.

Apparently sensing that they should go out and find another dying coal plant to put on life support, Enchant made an unsolicited bid to purchase two coal-fired units near Delta, Utah, that are slated for retirement. The plants’ owner, Intermountain Power Association, rejected the offer.