Mar 29, 2009 6:37 pm US/Mountain
March, April A Critical Time Of Year For Moisture
Good Question: What's the best cure for a drought?
Written by Alan Gionet
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) ―
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Bob Sakata has been farming his Colorado land for 62 years. He says his onion field should have germinated by now.
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Good Question, a regular part of CBS4 News at 10 p.m., is an opportunity for Alan Gionet to drill past the basic facts of a story and give it some depth & perspective. See more Good Question reports.
This week's snow was a help, but it wasn't enough. Colorado's state climatologist Nolan Doesken says things shape up this way -- "Overall mountain snowpack, not bad. Front Range, foothills out to the plains; not so good."
That means for some of us, we're in a moderate drought. We need more.
Even the definition of a drought is as slippery as a wet rock.
"One person's drought is another person's sunny day," Doesken said.
When we interviewed him at his office in an aging one-story building off hastily tossed together cinder blocks on the Colorado State University campus, he reeled off a number of things that help us understand storms and drought.
"This is a critical time of year," said Doesken. "Just before planting season with winter wheat out on the Eastern Plains greening up."
This week's storm dumped water that will get to the roots of plants ready to go for Spring.
"A significant storm; a March snowstorm or April snowstorm, what it does is it buys you a little bit more time."
But don't get him wrong. This is a good thing.
"When you miss out of your precipitation during your wet time of year, you can move into a drought quite quickly."
In many areas thanks to heavy rains last August, there's still decent moisture down deep. But the top six to eight inches of soil are dry. In spring the vegetation starts pulling that deep moisture out of the soil. Now is when the storms are made for replenishing dry ground.
"The best time to recharge soil moisture," said Doesken, "Is in spring and fall. Doesn't work so well in winter and in summer the plants can use it just about as fast as it can fall."
In deep winter the snow doesn't permeate the frozen ground as well and becomes runoff. It is also more likely to sublimate -- a process similar to evaporation. And the snow is wetter in spring, often containing one and half to two times as much moisture as January snows.
While drought is tough to define, really bad droughts take several years to develop. We're not there yet.
"Flash droughts, agricultural droughts in particular can occur within a few weeks to months," said Doesken.
The last storm will help prevent, but it won't stop what could still be coming.
Let's hope we continue to get more of what cures us and less of what ails us.
Find more in the video version of the story on the right.
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