Almost a month ago, I was about to write a post about how it was almost February, and we had no snow. I never got around to finishing it, and then a week later, it snowed.
Well, it’s now almost March. We have no snow. And this time, it’s serious.
That snowfall in early February was fairly minimal. Our entire winter, so far, has been minimal:
- Graph courtesy of https://calgary.weatherstats.ca/charts/snow-daily.html
The amount of snow we’ve seen this winter is the second-lowest (66.8 cm this year, lowest was 58.4cm winter of 2014-2015) we’ve seen since I arrived in Calgary in 2000.
Last year, we were in drought conditions most of the summer. This year, I’ll be amazed if we’re not already in drought conditions before Spring begins. We rely very heavily on snowmelt to bolster our two water sources: The Bearspaw Reservoir and the Glenmore Reservoir. And as we discovered last year, when the singular water main coming from the Bearspaw reservoir failed and plunged Calgary into weeks of Level 4 restrictions, this city is very vulnerable (not to mention very selfish) to water shortages.
We get our water from the mountains. We don’t have the Great Lakes, we don’t have an ocean, we don’t have a significant river (the Bow and the Elbow might be significant to Calgary, but they are comparatively puny compared to the Athabasca, the Peace, the Slave, even the North Saskatchewan), putting us at significant risk if the water levels drop too far.
Yes, it’s a no small irony that those same puny rivers caused one of Canada’s most expensive disasters in 2013.
To look at the annual snowfalls for the last 25 years, it would be difficult to suggest that there’s a downward trend. Every 8-10 years, there might be a signficant drop due to a multitude of factors.
But it has been getting warmer, year over year. And there’s more people here, year over year. And there’s no assurance that our water supply will be able to adapt.
#thingsthatworryme
