I took a train with my high school kid to Salt Lake City for a little urban immersion on Winter Break. We disembarked at 2:30 in the morning in a city experiencing what some said was the biggest blizzard they’d seen in a decade. That early morning, with packs on our backs, we walked into the swirling night time glow of a swallowed city, nothing moving but us as drifts piled up. Within half an hour, we found the place I had rented and we both passed out in fresh beds.
In the morning, with snow coming down hard, we walked into a sculpture gallery, block after block of cars and buildings softened and rounded. Anyone who was on foot looked like they’d stepped out for a space walk, lone figures appearing and disappearing behind falling shrouds.
You don’t complain about snowfall in the dry West, and this year my gratitude is through the roof. Outlying parts of Phoenix got a rare accumulation in the low desert and Flagstaff, in northern Arizona, has been pummeled, cars unable to get out of certain neighborhoods for weeks. I live in the Colorado Rockies where storm after storm has immobilized us, wood stove crackling inside, roof bursting into a low harumph as it lets off another avalanche. Across the way in the California Sierra I’m hearing the same, 200 percent above average, pictures showing highways plowed through white canyons, snow standing nine to fifteen feet high. Yosemite National Park is closed indefinitely and more is on the way.
I’ve been writing lately about the water situation in the Southwest. After twenty-two years of drought and mostly subpar snowpacks, the hydropower and water-distribution infrastructure of the Colorado River has reached a tipping point. Last summer, Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir in the United States, lowered to within 32 feet of operating levels for hydropower intakes at Glen Canyon Dam in Northern Arizona. At that level, engineers worry that air bubbles from the surface could be pulled in and start cavitating within the turbines, which could tear apart the inside of the dam, threatening its structural integrity. The reservoir hasn’t been this low since 1967, four years after it began filling. Last fall, I motored under a natural bridge in the sandstone with an aluminum skiff, passing below a landmark not seen since the 60s. The Bureau of Reclamation has come up with proposals including drilling a tunnel from the reservoir through solid sandstone and out to the river, bypassing the dam entirely, leaving it standing there dead. Ways of keeping this reservoir functional, and keeping the Colorado River flowing, are reaching their last straws.
For a moment, at least, we have a reprieve. With all the snow we’ve been getting, and the runoff to come, this summer could see a fifty-foot bump at Lake Powell, saved by the bell.
I won’t resist dancing a jig over this news, but this is just one year. If summer turns out to be a dry one, it’ll feel like drought again, like it usually has. Forecasters I talked with think we’d need six to eight big winters in a row to turn Lake Powell around and fill it again, not taking into account overallocation downstream and legally binding claims by thirty tribes that have never seen their water. All that taken into account, and if usage doesn’t somehow decrease drastically across seven states and Mexico, we’d probably need ten or fifteen big winters in a row, a significant climatic shift from where we’ve been. Some think Lake Powell can never be filled again, but with enough snow, damn near anything can happen.
Cross your fingers.
Or don’t.
My wife had to get plowed out of our place while I was gone with the kid, and another storm hit after that, putting another couple feet on the ground. In Salt Lake City, we walked through an urban wonderland, statues plastered as if they didn’t know what hit them. We tried to help push out cars but tires spun as we dug in our feet, snow up to our knees. We walked all day, and the next, and the next. At the outdoor botanical garden we were the only ticket holders, strolling along trails where trees had turned into white mansions, signs naming their plants buried.
The week could have easily been another crappy winter scene in Salt Lake, cold inverted and gray with smog, streets half-frozen in slush. Instead, it was like walking on the moon. Whomever one thanks for the world, thank you for this.
Photo: c childs
Your adventure in SLC reminds me of a day in April, long time ago, when my friend and workmate, Norma, and I walked from our Avenues homes to work on Main Street. It was customary in the 70s to have an April “limb breaker” of at least two feet of wet snow. The early flowers and leafed-out trees would be buried and broken. Of course, I couldn’t drive us to work as usual that day, so we merrily slogged through snow up to our knees. I do mean “merrily” as we were slackers, totally without work ethic. It was a job to pay the bills, but a great friendship grew between us there. We strolled past people sweeping off their cars with brooms. Everyone was in a good mood because we could all be more casual about getting to work on time. Our bosses would laud us for being valiant in coming to work at all. Meanwhile, we were thrilled by the frosty coat upon the trees, the mounds of snow obscuring the edges of the city. Victorian mansions took on a Norman Rockwell softness that enlivened their dour, aging facades. Within a block of our destination, Norma nudged me toward a coffee shop. “We need sustenance to face the day,” she said. It was hard to say no. The freshly-scrubbed air, the gentle breeze, the beauty all around enticed us to delay, for even a few more minutes, that descent into the basement of the savings and loan.