On Trump & tirades; April 1 snowpack update

Also: Oil executives blast White House econ policies;

Horse near Aneth. Photo illustration by Jonathan P. Thompson.

🤯 Trump Ticker 😱

Last week, one of the Land Desk’s more conservative readers cancelled his paid subscription. He wrote that he appreciated my passion for public lands, but was no longer interested in reading what he called a “tirade against Trump.”

This type of thing happens all the time in this business, and, unlike Elon Musk, I’m not looking for your pity. But I was a bit saddened, given that this person had been a paid subscriber since the Land Desk was launched, and because I really do appreciate having readers and commenters from across the political spectrum.

Besides, while I’m prone to a rant now and then, I do think “tirade” is taking it a little too far. Anyway, my point in telling y’all this is to let you know that writing about Trump’s shenanigans every dispatch is just about the last thing I want to be doing with my time. I’d much rather be delving into old maps, getting into the nuances of Western water, exploring the history of floods and droughts and wildfires, taking contrarian views on the housing crisis, or dissecting the contradictions of oil and gas markets. And I will continue to do all of that.

At the same time, it’s impossible for me to ignore the barrage of destruction, corruption, chaos, authoritarianism, and incompetence emanating from the White House. My passion for public lands — and for justice, truth, reason, morality, decency, intelligence, and kindness — demands that I document these egregious acts, and do my part to resist them, even if it is just by informing my readership about what’s happening.

I am not impartial, not by any means. I am partial to the planet and its survival, toward my fellow human beings, toward peace and justice and compassion and truth. I am not, however, partisan: I will scrutinize Democrats and Republicans equally, fact-check the left and the right, and give credit where credit is due — even to Donald Trump.

***

And on that note: The Trump administration appears to have unfrozen nearly $4.2 million in federal funding to help the Hopi Tribe build a solar-powered microgrid to run two remote wells and associated infrastructure that will provide water to Upper and Lower Moenkopi. The funding was approved by the Biden Energy Department, Trump froze it as part of a larger stop on Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction law money, but now it has been released. So good on you, Donny!

Now, how about you direct your Environmental Protection Agency to release funding for the Walker River Paiute Tribe to expand access to clean water and electric power infrastructure, and for Navajo Power’s program to bring solar to off-grid homes.

***

Though it may be inadvertent, Trump’s economic policies may ultimately benefit the environment in some ways. The haphazard, on-again, off-again tariffs, for example, along with the gutting of the federal government’s workforce, have sent the stock market into a tailspin. Meanwhile, the tariffs — along with reciprocal tariffs levied by the U.S.’s trading partners — will increase prices on most consumer goods. People will buy less, travel less, which will mean less pollution and environmental impacts.

***

And yet more kudos for Trump! Seriously. Despite all of his bluster, Trump has managed to really piss off oil and gas executives — the same ones that were throwing money at his campaign just a few months ago — and possibly dampen drilling on public lands.

See, the thing about tariffs is that they very well may raise the price you pay for gasoline (depending on where your local refinery gets its crude oil), but the economy-dampening part of tariffs actually brings down the price of oil, while also raising the cost of steel pipes and other supplies. That’s no bueno for petroleum companies, whose profit margins are directly proportional to the price of crude.

Many of these folks won’t criticize Trump in public, given his vindictive and authoritarian leanings, but give them the cover of anonymity, as a Dallas Federal Reserve survey did, and they go off on the White House’s herky-jerky non-policies. Here’s a sampling:

The key word to describe 2025 so far is “uncertainty” and as a public company, our investors hate uncertainty … This uncertainty is being caused by the conflicting messages coming from the new administration. There cannot be "U.S. energy dominance" and $50 per barrel oil; those two statements are contradictory. At $50-per-barrel oil, we will see U.S. oil production start to decline immediately and likely significantly (1 million barrels per day plus within a couple quarters). This is not “energy dominance.

The administration's chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets. "Drill, baby, drill" is nothing short of a myth and populist rallying cry. Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn't have a clear goal. We want more stability.

The administration’s tariffs immediately increased the cost of our casing and tubing by 25 percent even though inventory costs our pipe brokers less. "Drill, baby, drill" does not work with $50 per barrel oil. Rigs will get dropped, employment in the oil industry will decrease, and U.S. oil production will decline as it did during COVID-19.

The rhetoric from the current administration is not helpful. If the oil price continues to drop, we will shut in production and do quick drilling.

There was only one mention of regulations getting in the way of the oil business, and that wasn’t federal rules, but state ones:

Our program is located in central California. California's government continues to undermine permitting by their staff's inactivity and delays. Ongoing actions in that bureaucracy are increasing costs and regulatory hurdles, hampering investment in the state.

Demand has lessened resulting in a lower oil price. The same applies to gas. Unstable capital markets are affecting oil prices. The political climate caused by the new presidential administration appears to be creating instability. Energy markets are not exempt from the loss of public faith in all markets.

We are all busy here.

Well, there you have it, folks.

***

Oh, and these oil companies might also be angry that the MAGAs are all buying Teslas — or at least pretending to — in order to “own the libs.” Which is pretty funny, given the amount of gibberish Trump devoted to dissing electric vehicles during his campaign rallies. Tesla also stands to benefit the most from Trump’s tariffs, another dig at the internal combustion fans.

***

Maybe the national parks will be a bit less crowded this summer, as well, as international travel ebbs.

Anyone who’s traveled the Western national park service knows that they are popular with overseas visitors. On a single grocery run at the Page, Arizona, Safeway recently, I heard no fewer than three different languages spoken, in addition to Navajo and English, and that was in the off-season. In 2018 (the last year that data is available), more than 14 million international travelers visited U.S. national parks and monuments. About 14% of the Grand Canyon National Parks’ visitors were from overseas, with about 6% of Zion’s visitation from overseas.

Tourism Economics is predicting that international travel to the U.S. will be down significantly this year, thanks not only to the administration’s hostile economic moves, but also “polarizing Trump administration policies and rhetoric.” Also, there’s that thing where travelers have been detained at the border, even thrown in jail, simply for trying to get a visa. This decline undoubtedly will impact Western U.S. tourism and national park and monument visitation numbers. Not good for the tourism economy, but it might give the parks a much needed rest.

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

It’s first-of-the-month snowpack update time again, and this will likely be the last of the season barring some freak climatic shift over the next several weeks. Snowpack levels typically peak in mid-elevation areas in mid- to late-March, and in the high country in mid- to late-April, meaning we are now headed into spring runoff season.

Generally speaking, it’s looking like runoff will be average to paltry, depending on which side of the snow-divide your watershed falls. It is a very jagged line, by the way, with places in the west and north having average to above average snowpack, while the southern-Interior West generally had a super dry winter. But even within those areas there are sort of outliers: The Grand Traverse ski race between Aspen and Crested Butte was canceled due to lack of snow for the first time in its 26-year history.

And there’s big variations over short distances. Red Mountain Pass is still just below median, for example, while the southern San Juan Mountains, just a few dozen miles away, are experiencing a severely dry winter.

Before I get to the graphics, however, a quick note. The snowpack and precipitation plots I run here come from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. It’s just one of the valuable services they provide. I haven’t found any stats on whether DOGE has gone after NRCS’s staff, yet. But the DOGE website says it has or will cancel the leases for the following NRCS offices. Whether they and their staffs will simply go away, be absorbed into another facility, or what, isn’t disclosed.

• Natural Resource Conservation Service offices slated for lease cancellations: Missoula, Montana; Wasilla and Fairbanks, Alaska; Logan, Utah; Gallup and Raton, New Mexico; Yuma, Arizona; Dayton, Puyallup, and Renton, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and Woodland, Yreka, Salinas, Oxnard, and Blythe, California.

Hopefully the staff of these offices and services they provide will endure.

Now to the snowpack plots. I included the plots for 2021 and 2023 because those were the most recent big and crappy years for snowpack.

The watersheds that feed Lake Powell are not in terrible shape, sitting at 88% of the median just six days before the typical peak. However, levels are lower than they were in 2021 at this time, and 2021 was not a good year for the Colorado River. Source: NRCS.

The North Fork of the Gunnison has followed a snow accumulation pattern similar to the Upper Colorado River’s.

Red Mountain Pass is one of the few bright spots in the Four Corners region. Snow levels have tracked right around normal for most of the winter. Though it’s now down to 90% of median, there are potentially still over three weeks left in the snow accumulation season, meaning an above-average season is still possible; snow is forecast for much of this week there.

The Mancos-La Plata basin, on the other hand, is looking mighty grim, with little hope of recovery. In 2021 (the red line), Mancos ditches ran dry early in the irrigating season, forcing farms to fallow fields or even suspend operations for the year. This does not bode well for Dry Side farmers, (i.e. those in the La Plata River drainage).

This SNOTEL site, in the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff, is the comeback story of the year, rebounding from ultra-dry to average over the course of several weeks. It’s one of the only sites in Arizona that received measurable snow accumulation this season.

The drought has spread and intensified over the last year.

And it doesn’t look like it will get better anytime soon …

---

If you want to know more about the drought and the Colorado River basin, I’d suggest checking out the Wright-Ingraham Institute’s interactive Drought Interfaces app. It’s super cool and informative.