Daylight Spendings Time

We are 10 days from an early equinox and the Sierra winter is melting away already. The Merced watershed has 38% of average snowpack water content and Yosemite Falls is running with the water that's not supposed to flow until June. Horsetail Fall didn't produce appreciable 'firefall.' The big storms just didn't come this season. The low-elevation canyon west of the park has a decent quantity of flower species and numbers, but the slopes look surprisingly dry instead of their usual green. Redbuds punctuate the verdure now.

Rough-winged swallows, white-throated swifts, and turkey vultures are all flying overhead in El Portal. This foothill region also has singing flickers and orange-crowned warblers; ruby-crowned kinglets are warming up with partial songs.

We are curious to see what COVID-19 does to Yosemite visitation this season, where people over 60 are advised to stay home, large gatherings are to be avoided and many people don't want to travel. My May trip to our sister national parks in China has cancelled, but I hope to go in September. With our park getting at least 25% of its visitors from other countries, we expect to see less of the world in Yosemite. The park will be here nonetheless.

April Flowers Bringing It

The Merced River approaches 'minor flood' stage tonight, with the previous two night's flows being near 5300 cfs, which is roughly double the average peak spring volume. Valley meadows are wet, some trails are under water, some campsites unusable, and it's a great time to be a duck. While exciting, this is the normal and predictable outcome from a winter that brought the Merced watershed 153% of average snowpack water content as of 1 April (and 176% in the Tuolumne watershed). The waterfalls are ripping right now. You may recall that (after vehicle accidents) swiftwater is the number one factor for visitor fatalities in Yosemite; respect the water. April has been warmer than usual (only one day of wist ice [frazil] in its typically most productive month) and we wonder if peak runoff has come 3-4 weeks earlier than the late May average.

There is still a huge quantity of snow at 7000' and above. While we did have some warm storms this winter that brought rain to high elevations, we had far more storms that delivered snow down to 2000'. Several recent SAR call-outs have resulted from people getting up into deep snow where they didn't expect it. Some have been getting their intel from various posts/photos about nice April hikes that others did last year - that was a very dry winter. The Fourmile Trail and the JMT below Nevada Fall (ice cut) are still closed and dangerous. The High Sierra Camps won't open this season. Expect stream crossings to be challenging and snow to persist well into mid-summer in the high country.

Dogwood flowers are at the puppy stage in Yosemite Valley. Tanagers, orioles and grosbeaks are singing and shining brightly. Peregrines are at their eyries. The green dragons are rolling. "This grand show is eternal..."

Wet Spring

After another very dry winter, Yosemite has had a bit of recovery with a wet spring. We had warm storms in March and April and are now enjoying a string of about 10 days of cool, cloudy afternoons. The first weekend of April we had the markedly unusual experience of a very late, warm, winter-scale storm. This atmospheric river brought high elevation rain instead of snow, a flood forecast, and a successful pre-emptive evacuation of Yosemite Valley. Sure enough, the Merced River came up through the campgrounds, over the roads, through Housekeeping Camp, and filled the meadows. NPS has nice footage online. There's a persistent myth that these 'Pineapple Express' storms melt a lot of snow, but they really don't. It's the high elevation rain over thousands of acres of bare rock and thin soils that fills the river. This flood event wasn't from a 'monster' rainstorm, just a pretty big storm up high. Lower elevation side streams barely rose, compared to what the river did.

Because of the poor winter and the late-season rains, our springtime runoff peaked a month ahead of normal. The Merced and the waterfalls are already declining in volume, especially with the cloudy conditions we've been having. The clouds are delaying our minimal runoff a bit, which will help waterfalls last and forests to stay watered a bit further into the summer.

The park is still busy felling hazard trees, the small portion of our dead trees that might fall on people/roads/infrastructure. This year's below-average precipitation and above-average warmth will continue to stress Sierra forests (over-thick with trees due to decades of fire suppression) and we'll see more of the weak trees succumb to native bark beetles. Despite changes in Washington, D.C., the NPS in Yosemite is sticking with science and is not dodging the reality of climate change in its training of new rangers. The climate IS changing, it's changing NOW, in ways more rapid than ever, it is because of OUR hydrocarbon use, and it'll have serious consequences for US. It's disappointing that some political leaders think they know more than NASA or the National Academies of Science. Among other things, our fire season is longer, more severe and is costing us all more money to deal with. I'll be heading up to Lyell and Maclure Glaciers with Yosemite Conservancy groups in August and I expect to see those small ice bodies closer to leaving Yosemite entirely glacier-less.

Luckily, because we are causing the current rapid changes in climate, we should have some influence over it. Let's work to reduce our mistake and bring back snowy winters.

Yosemite Closure

An unusually cold and wet storm has delivered a lot of snow, causing extensive tree damage in Yosemite. All roads into Yosemite are closed. Power is expected to be out for 5-7 days. At under 2000' El Portal got 8-9 inches of snow, something not seen in decades. Most of the damage is to live oaks, with hundreds of trees and large limbs down in El Portal alone. The rest of the Merced Canyon has numerous small rockfalls and landslips partly blocking roads between Mariposa and Yosemite Valley. The snowfall took place mostly overnight on Sunday. Skiers exiting Ostrander Hut on Sunday worked as a 20-person team to break trail. They scooped up others along the Glacier Point Road who had dropped from exhaustion pushing against the heavy accumulation. When they reached the trailhead, they couldn't leave Badger Pass; about 60 people spent the night in the day lodge at Badger. Yosemite West has run out of water and all residents and guests have been escorted out of the park. Community meetings later today will tell us more, but it's possible that the park will be closed and all remaining visitors and non-essential employees evacuated. The generators that keep the lights and heat working can only do so much, and they're needed to operate water and wastewater systems, too.
I'll post more when I can.

Long Live Bob Fry

A hybrid yellow-shafted/red-shafted flicker has been seen in El Portal for more than a week now. The last record of such here was in 1957. El Portal also had 5 raptors seen this past weekend: kestrel, sharp-shinned hawk, golden eagle, red-tailed hawk and peregrine falcon. Warm afternoons lately have made for good soaring conditions.
But a series of winter storms will bring more precipitation starting tomorrow and running at least a week. Snow levels are expected to remain high (7000') for now. This means that runoff will be strong for the moment but perhaps less so in the spring. The Merced is running at much higher than average volume and the Valley's waterfalls are likewise pretty impressive now. This morning Upper Yosemite Falls was catching a twisty wind and a nice solar spectrum.
Speaking of showers, tonight is the peak for the Geminid meteors. If you can see clear sky between midnight and dawn, you may see as many as 120/hour. Go out at 5 a.m. and you'll see Venus bright enough to cast a shadow; Saturn is just above Venus. Both planets are "in Virgo", which is of no human significance.
Of true human significance is the passing of Yosemite ranger naturalist Bob Fry last week. Bob was an old-timer, a buddy of Carl Sharsmith's, and a living legend to today's naturalist staff. "Encyclopedia Bobtannica" he was called with fondness and awe, in reference to his vast breadth and depth of natural history knowledge. No one will ever know all the stuff that Bob knew about Yosemite. A giant sequoia has gone down and our forest is diminished.