States Fight Wildfires as Watershed Research Takes to the Skies

For some parts of the country, this week the weather came and went like a lion – in full roar.

Martina Gonzales/Las Vegas, New Mexico: “I’m just taking the most valuable stuff that I have, that I actually need.  So pretty much everything else just has to stay.”

Winds up to 70 miles per hour hindered firefighters and exacerbated seven wildfires raging across several counties in drought-stricken New Mexico – currently, the most in any state - according to the National Interagency Fire Center.  Nearly 16,000 homes were evacuated with almost 200 residences destroyed as the Calf Canyon and Hermits Peak blazes, which merged over a week ago, torched over 200 square miles of northern forestlands.  The blazes prompted the governor to seek disaster aid from the White House.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham/D – New Mexico: “We are going to be the very first state in the nation to have a presidential declaration accepted and signed by the president, unlocking all of these resources for watershed recovery, restoration of all those wild lands, and personal, direct financial reparation and assistance…before the fire is out.”

Further north, still, in Nebraska, emergency management officials say tinder-dry areas aren’t out of the woods yet.  Recent wildfires sacked the Cornhusker State’s agricultural industry – burning off topsoil, pasturelands, and stored livestock feed.  Fire-trashed center pivot irrigation systems could harbor another gut-punch for producers - as insured values haven’t tracked with cost-doubling inflationary trends over the past two years.

The other shoe dropped early this week as parts of the panhandle received up to 15 inches of unseasonal snow, with rain inundating most of the rest of Nebraska.  Several other Midwestern states gripped by moderate to exceptional drought also received notable precipitation, which delayed spring planting in some areas.

Jeffrey Deems/Co-Founder – Airborne Snow Observatories: “Snow is our biggest reservoir, but it’s not uniformly distributed across the landscape.  What we do is fly an aircraft over the mountain watersheds and get complete coverage with our remote sensing instruments of snow depth, snow water equivalent, and snow albedo – or reflectivity.”

In Colorado, upstream from both Nebraska and New Mexico, water managers are using a NASA-developed eye-in-the-sky to map water availability.  Officials say more traditional methods have become increasingly unreliable due to rising temperatures associated with climate change - and credit airborne snow observation with success prior to the pandemic.

Taylor Winchell/Climate Adaptation Strategist – Denver Water: “In 2019, the snowpack was above our traditional measurement stations – and that information allowed us to prepare for a second peak of runoff, and accurately lower our reservoirs to capture that water, to avoid any flooding impacts downstream.”

The National Weather Service’s Seasonal Drought Outlook predicts improved drought conditions through the Great Plains and Northern Rockies through the end of July, but forecasters say the rest of the American West should buckle up for a bumpy summer.

For Market to Market, I’m Josh Buettner.