Winter doesn’t mean the end of fun at Galena Creek Visitor Center! Building snow creatures, sledding, snowshoeing, cross country skiing- the fun is just beginning when the first snow falls! Snow is beautiful and fun, but it also is important to the environment and us.
The snowpack- the snow on the Sierra Nevada mountains in the winter- acts as a natural reservoir, storing water for the spring and summer months. This is vital for northern Nevada and California’s water supply. When the air gets warmer and spring comes, snow melts! Usually, this begins in April and ends in August. During the hot summer months, rain is scarce, and the water from the snowpack is the water which is used in hydropower, agriculture, and residential water. The snow melting in the summer leaves the soil and ground moist, which is necessary for plants to grow and to safeguard forests from devastating wildfires. The melting snow waters Sierra Nevada plants, which creates a healthy ecosystem.
We need snow for our tourism; the snowpack feeds alpine lakes such as Lake Tahoe, and it provides outdoor recreation that many people in and around northern Nevada work in. Less snowfall ruins snowboarding and skiing. The melting snow that we do get creates worse recreation conditions, such as packed snow.
What is happening to the snow?
Snow has been arriving later and we’ve been getting less overall. This is due to climate change, because warmer temperatures cause worse droughts, and the precipitation largely falls as rain. The little snow we get melts earlier, providing us with less water in the dry summers, more fire-prone forests, and lower lake levels. It isn’t a coincidence that as less snow falls in winter, the wildfires of summer tend to be more extreme, spread faster, and occur more frequently.
The snow saves us, the environment, and our beautiful mountains. This is my mantra while I drive on unplowed roads this winter.
