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Why Is The U.S. West Experiencing A Megadrought?

Climate change is affecting the U.S. especially strongly in the west. Rivers and reservoirs are experiencing dangerously low levels.

The Colorado River is vanishing before our eyes.

The nation’s two largest reservoirs are at dangerously low levels.

This was one of them, Lake Mead, In 2001 and then in 2015. In just fourteen years, the lake dropped 143 feet and fires are devastating forests and homes from Oregon to Arizona.

2022 has been a year of drought, but officials say the west has actually been in a megadrought since the year 2000.

Why is it so dry out west? Should we blame climate change? And most importantly for the 79 million Americans that live in the U.S. West: Is this the new normal?

Scientists have answered these questions by studying the silent witnesses to climate’s annual fluctuations in trees.

Fat rings usually mean wet years, thin rings mean dry years.

Ancient trees have revealed that the West has suffered periods of drought for centuries, long before giant dams or human-caused climate change.

But in February scientists wrote a paper in the journal Nature Climate Change putting the ongoing megadrought in historical perspective.

They found drought conditions in the west haven’t been this severe in at least 1200 years.

One driver of this megadrought is high temperatures. The blue line indicates the average temperature since 1895.

Meanwhile, since 2000, the west has had mostly low precipitation. Notably, there’s a shortage of snow. Snowpack is more valuable than rain, say scientists, since it moistens soils for months into the summer as it steadily melts.

Robert Davies is an associate professor at Utah State University.

“The snowpack is definitely declining over the last 40 years, particularly in the lower and mid elevations,” said Davies.

There’s another factor, what scientists call vapor pressure deficit, or more simply, dry air. Over the last 22 years, the dry air has grown thirstier and thirstier, sucking moisture right out of the ground.

As the drought has worsened, municipalities have desperately tapped their wells for water, but that’s putting the system at severe risk. For example, in California’s Central Valley, government data shows that groundwater is getting deeper and deeper to access.

So how much of the blame can we pin on climate change? For the Nature paper, the scientists did two experiments using 29 climate models. In one they measured how a warming planet had exacerbated the megadrought. On the other, they simulated what soil moisture would be like if climate change had never happened. The warming planet, they found, made the drought worse by 19%.

A few years of better snow and rain could break the western megadrought, the report says. But its authors expect the U.S. west’s climate to become more and more arid.

In the report it says the “increasingly dry baseline state” makes “future megadroughts increasingly likely” which will change the west for generations to come.

: newsy.com

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California Officials Warn Of Possible Blackouts Due To Extreme Heat

California is experiencing a major heatwave that may cause a statewide blackout due to extreme temperatures.

California’s beaches are about the only bearable place to be as the state endures what is now a week of scorching, triple-digit temperatures.

The state’s electric grid operator anticipates its highest demand ever in the month of September.

“This heat wave is on track to be both the hottest and the longest on record for this state and many parts of the west for the month of September,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Now leaders are increasing the urgency of their warnings to Californians about rolling blackouts if they can’t conserve enough electricity to avoid forecasted shortfalls.

The operator said the state’s grid narrowly avoided outages Monday.

They issued a level three alert Tuesday evening, just one step away from ordering rolling blackouts.

“Just go out early in the morning, and then stay home. That is how I would describe it. It is hot,” said Marilyn Abrams, who is visiting Southern California.

The temperatures have offered no help to firefighters battling more than a dozen blazes across the state.

Near Los Angeles, the so-called Fairview Fire is now deadly and is blamed for two deaths.

The fire is burning uncomfortably close to homes.

Firefighters feared it would explode in the hot, dry conditions this week.

The temperatures are not isolated to California.

Medford, Oregon hit 105 degrees Fahrenheit Tuesday.

And in Vegas? 112 degrees.

In Sacramento it hit 114 degrees.

In Utah, Salt Lake City is having its hottest summer on record.

Fish are washing up dead in the Lost Creek Reservoir where a shrinking water level heats up faster during the day, and deprives fish of oxygen.

“Less fish is always a bad thing, right?” said Tom Thomson, a Utah fisherman.

“Hoping to see more snow and get more water here,” said Steven Randall, a Utah paddleboarder.

Further east in Denver, students were released early as highs hit the upper 90s challenging older schools without A/C.

It’s been a challenge to keep people safe and keep the power on in an oven-hot West.

: newsy.com

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Greenland ‘Zombie Ice’ Threatens To Raise Global Sea Levels 10 Inches

Zombie ice is part of Greenland’s massive ice sheet that is melting.

We’ve got a zombie problem. No, not the kind you see in movies.

This zombie problem is zombie ice. It’s part of the massive Greenland ice sheet. It’s also referred to as doomed ice, because it’s going to melt no matter what.

Several leading glaciologists studied the zombie ice and say it’s going to cause widespread global sea level rise.

Greenland has one of the two largest ice sheets on the planet. The other one is in the Antarctic, which has problems too.

The Greenland ice is not growing. It’s basically dead.

Ice grows when it snows. The snow piles up, gets squished down and adds new layers of ice to the ice sheet. The problem is, there’s been a lot less snow due to climate change, so the ice is not growing and replenishing what’s doomed to melt.

“The Arctic is in crisis. It’s warming three times the rate of the global average,” said professor Gail Whiteman, founder of Arctic Basecamp — a team of scientists sounding the alarm and calling for action to prevent Arctic change. “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay there.”

It doesn’t. And it won’t. When all 120 trillion tons of the zombie ice melts, it’s going to rush out to the oceans and they’re going to rise almost 11 inches. That’s twice the amount the U.N. Climate Change Report predicted just last year.

If all that melted water gets piled up on top of the continental U.S., it would be 37 feet deep from coast to coast.

Even if we slammed the brakes on all greenhouse gas emissions around the world, the study says it’s too late.

It’s all going to melt, likely by the end of the century.

: newsy.com

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Governor: Search For Kentucky Flood Victims Could Take Weeks

As rainfall hammered Appalachia, water tumbled down hillsides and into valleys and hollows where it swelled creeks and streams coursing through towns.

Kentucky’s governor said it could take weeks to find all the victims of flash flooding that killed at least 16 people when torrential rains swamped towns across Appalachia.

More rainstorms are forecast in coming days as rescue crews continue the struggle to get into hard-hit areas, some of them among the poorest places in America.

The rain let up early Friday after parts of eastern Kentucky received between 8 and 10 1/2 inches over 48 hours. But some waterways were not expected to crest until Saturday and Gov. Andy Beshear warned the death toll could rise further.

“From everything we’ve seen, we may be updating the count of how many we lost for the next several weeks,” Beshear said. “In some of these areas, it’s hard to know exactly how many people were there.”

Patricia Colombo, 63, of Hazard, Kentucky, became stranded when her car stalled in floodwaters on a state highway. Colombo began to panic when water started rushing in. Though her phone was dead, she saw a helicopter overhead and waved it down. The helicopter crew radioed a ground team that plucked her to safety.

Colombo stayed the night at her fiance’s home in Jackson and they took turns sleeping, repeatedly checking the water with flashlights to see if it was rising. Though her car was a loss, Colombo said others had it worse in a region where poverty is endemic.

“Many of these people cannot recover out here. They have homes that are half underwater, they’ve lost everything,” she said.

It’s the latest in a string of catastrophic deluges that have pounded parts of the U.S. this summer, including St. Louis earlier this week and again on Friday. Scientists warn climate change is making weather disasters more common.

As rainfall hammered Appalachia this week, water tumbled down hillsides and into valleys and hollows where it swelled creeks and streams coursing through small towns. The torrent engulfed homes and businesses and trashed vehicles. Mudslides marooned some people on steep slopes.

Rescue teams backed by the National Guard used helicopters and boats to search for the missing. Beshear said Friday that at least six children were among the victims and that the total number of lives lost could more than double as rescue teams reach more areas. Among those who died were four children from the same family in Knott County, the county coroner said Friday.

President Joe Biden said in a social media post that he spoke Friday with Beshear and offered the federal government’s support. Biden also declared a federal disaster to direct relief money to more than a dozen Kentucky counties.

The flooding extended into western Virginia and southern West Virginia.

Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency for six counties in West Virginia where the flooding downed trees, power outages and blocked roads. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin also made an emergency declaration, enabling officials to mobilize resources across the flooded southwest of the state.

More than 20,000 utility customers in Kentucky and almost 6,100 in Virginia remained without power late Friday, poweroutage.us reported.

Extreme rain events have become more common as climate change bakes the planet and alters weather patterns, according to scientists. That’s a growing challenge for officials during disasters, because models used to predict storm impacts are in part based on past events and can’t keep up with increasingly devastating flash floods and heat waves like those that have recently hit the Pacific Northwest and southern Plains.

“It’s a battle of extremes going on right now in the United States,” said University of Oklahoma meteorologist Jason Furtado. “These are things we expect to happen because of climate change. … A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor and that means you can produce increased heavy rainfall.”

The deluge came two days after record rains around St. Louis dropped more than 12 inches and killed at least two people. Last month, heavy rain on mountain snow in Yellowstone National Park triggered historic flooding and the evacuation of more than 10,000 people. In both instances, the rain flooding far exceeded what forecasters predicted.

The floodwaters raging through Appalachia were so swift that some people trapped in their homes couldn’t be immediately reached, said Floyd County Judge-Executive Robbie Williams.

Just to the west in hard-hit Perry County, authorities said some people remained unaccounted for and almost everyone in the area suffered some sort of damage.

“We’ve still got a lot of searching to do,” said Jerry Stacy, the county’s emergency management director.

More than 330 people have sought shelter, Beshear said. And with property damage so extensive, the governor opened an online portal for donations to the victims.

Beshear predicted that it would take more than a year to fully rebuild.

The governor got a look at the flooding from aboard a helicopter Friday.

“Hundreds of homes, the ballfields, the parks, businesses under more water than I think any of us have ever seen in that area,” the governor said. “Absolutely impassable in numerous spots. Just devastating.”

Portions of at least 28 state roads in Kentucky were blocked due to flooding or mudslides, Beshear said. Rescue crews in Virginia and West Virginia worked to reach people where roads weren’t passable

Brown reported from Billings, Montana. Contributors include Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville, Kentucky; Timothy D. Easley in Jackson, Kentucky, and Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Newsy Exclusive: A Visit To Skywalker Ranch

Disney Plus released a new series that gives us a never-before-seen look at what it takes to make some iconic movies visual masterpieces.

It’s the story of the cutting-edge special effects company almost as famous as the movies it helps make.

Industrial Light and Magic, or ILM, was founded by George Lucas in 1975.

“When I was writing Star Wars, there were no special effects houses anywhere in the world. So how were we going to do the effects? I realized I was going to have to start a company,” Lucas said.

A new six-part Disney-Plus series pulls back the curtain on the people and inventions that helped ILM transform movie-making.

“We were departing from convention. We had to build equipment from scratch. This was a long shot,” said John Dykstra, Academy-Award winning, special effects artist.

“Light & Magic” is directed by Larry Kasdan, a longtime screenwriter who knows Star Wars. He’s always been impressed with ILM’s wizardry.

“What a lot of these people share and what the company shares is this ethos: you will run into problems. But we know we’re going to solve them. We don’t yet have the tool to do this new thing. But we will not give up until we do,” Kasdan said.

Stop Motion Animator Phil Tippet helped Lucas fill the galaxy with strange new creatures.

“So I spent a day just drawing really quickly. It could be this, could be that. Could be this could be that? And sent it to George and he picked one,” Tippet said.

“Think it’ll be alright because it’s superimposed and there’s snow blowing in front of it and all kinds of stuff,” Lucas said.

Joe Johnston was there in ILM’s early days, too.

“I didn’t particularly know what I was doing. And a lot of people really didn’t know what they were doing. They were we made a lot of mistakes. And we had a lot of failures,”Johnston said. “And we’ve been — we’ve had a lot of successes and we sort of learned how to do it. George really gave us and I think particularly me, he gave me a lot of freedom to design this stuff and to experiment and see what worked.’

Johnson went on to direct his own films including Marvel’s first Captain America movie.

Recently, he and a few former ILM-ers reunited at Skywalker Ranch. George Lucas built the pastoral filmmaker’s retreat in the hills of Marin County, California near San Francisco.

NEWSY’S CLAYTON SANDELL: Do you remember the first time you came here?

JOE JOHNSTON: I do.

SANDELL: What was it like?

JOHNSTON: There was nothing here. Literally nothing here. George had just bought the land and we had a picnic. I think there were only like fifteen of us.

Today, the Victorian house where Lucas keeps offices and a research library overlooks Lake Ewok; there’s goats, chickens, and even a dedicated fire department.

Vineyards produce a Skywalker-brand wine, but what looks like an 1880s winery is actually full of state-of-the art sound editing rooms, recording studios and a theater.

For decades it’s been the professional home of Academy-Award-winning Sound Designer Ben Burtt.

“I first came out here with a gang led by George Lucas in 1978,” Burtt said. “We had a shooting range right in this area where we are, where we did all the guns for “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” machine guns, and bullet ricochets.”

The countless sounds recorded at Skywalker Ranch help complete the illusions created by ILM.

“The opening of the first Star Wars movie, people really thought it came out fine and people were excited to see it. But once the sound was put in for that shot, it just elevated it to something quite different. And that that’s the magic of sound, which is, it brings to life the visuals,” Burtt said.

ILM was always evolving, but nothing disrupted the company culture more than the arrival of computer graphics.

Ed Catmull was the co-founder of Pixar and the President of Walt Disney Animation.

“What was cool about ILM was they were just trying to get the image on the screen. So they were neutral about this stuff when we weren’t good enough. But when we started to get good at this stuff, they were open to it,” Catmull said.

But others, especially in the ILM model shop, felt threatened.

Modelmaker John Goodson successfully made the switch from plastic to pixels.

SANDELL: Not everybody was happy about the digital revolution.

JOHN GOODSON: No! I would say most of us were not, that were not part of it. That was really difficult. Really difficult.

“Well I always say that visual effects, we’re visual liars. And if we’ve done our job well, you don’t realize you’ve been lied to. And that’s kind of the trick, you know, it’s to convince you, something is real, that doesn’t exist,” Goodson said.

Doug Chiang joined ILM in 1989. He’s now Lucasfilm’s executive creative director. He says, despite growing to thousands of employees in five countries, the ILM DNA is intact.

“I kind of grew up idolizing all these guys,” Chiang said. “The way I look at it is, it’s like the old school of ILM magnified by ten. But all the inherent qualities that makes it ILM are still there. It’s the people, it’s the family.”

Over nearly 50 years much of ILM’s story has been told. But at Skywalker Ranch Joe Johnston says there are still a few secrets literally buried away.

JOHNSTON: In the foundation of the main house there’s a time capsule.

SANDELL: Do you remember what’s in it?

JOHNSTON: All kinds of great stuff. There’s one of my sketchbooks in it. A bunch of other things, including a $1 bill that I wrote a message on. You’ll have to wait.

SANDELL: You’re not going to tell us what the message was?

JOHNSTON: No. That’s what time capsules are all about!

“Light & Magic” is its own time capsule.

A love letter to an origin story of innovation and creativity.

“It was a really special time that I don’t think could ever be repeated. That experience of bringing people together who had never worked on films before,” Johnston said.

: newsy.com

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Delays With USPS Delivery In Multiple States

Major staffing shortages are causing delays in USPS mail deliveries in multiple states, including Montana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Massachusetts.

Neither rain, nor snow, nor heat, nor gloom of night is the longtime unofficial post office motto — but there’s no mention of massive staffing shortages.

Garrett Figuerla is a Bozeman resident.

“They said they had carrier shortages on several routes,” Figuerla said.

Much of America still depends on mail six days a week for deliveries of prescriptions, bills, payments and COVID test kits.

But some people in Bozeman, Montana say they’ve gone more than a week without anything delivered; no letters, no bills, nothing.

“I had put a bill in the mail three days ago and it stayed in my mailbox, and so on the way back from dropping the bill off, I decided I was just going to come in here and see what was going on, and they said that people have quit and we’re not getting our mail,” said Vicky Riojas, a Bozeman resident.

“The last couple of days, the deliveries that were supposed to be dropped off at our home have not been delivered. They’ve put a note in our mailbox saying that they’re undeliverable,” said Sara Elushik, a Bozeman resident.

It’s not just Montana. Across the country, similar stories of gaps in service can be found from Minneapolis to Kentucky to Boston.

Paul Steidler is a USPS policy expert at The Lexington Institute.

“When the Postal Service told us repeatedly, loudly and very clearly in return for the lower the longer delivery times, you’re going to have more reliable service. It’s extremely disappointing to see what’s going on not only in Montana, but the current situations that you mentioned, and Massachusetts, Kentucky, Indiana,” Steidler said.

This report admits this is a problem years in the making and was made worse by the pandemic.

A 10-year plan released by the USPS in 2020 aimed to improve employee retention and speed up the hiring process.

Steidler says the USPS has hired more people, which he says makes this more confusing.

“I mean, staffing is at the highest levels in 10 years, mail delivery is down about 30%,” he said.

Steidler says another thing could be at play: package delivery.

“You have mail volume going down this significantly and package volume going up. That’s a much more labor intensive area that people have to be involved in,” Steidler said.

Back in Montana, a source inside the Bozeman USPS, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, sent Newsy photos of what they say is mail stacked up in the office. The source said some piles waited five days to go out and on one day alone, five separate routes didn’t leave the building. That’s anywhere from 500 to 1000 addresses per route.

Postal Service emails obtained by Newsy explain the challenge of finding workers because of competition from fast food restaurants and gas stations that pay the same or higher wages.

Another USPS source says postal workers are burning out, working 10 to 12 hour days 6 days a week. They say many new hires don’t last long.

“We’ve been struggling. We had to overburden our employees,” an Ohio USPS worker said.

A source inside the Bozeman post office says they’ve gone from more than 120 employees to less than 50.

USPS representatives tell Newsy Bozeman is a high growth city and they have four jobs available with four more to be posted. But we found this job fair posting from April advertising 60 open positions.

The USPS response if a customer misses delivery one day because of staffing, they will get their mail the next day.

That’s not what these frustrated residents are seeing.

“People are not going to go through the time and the trouble to complain about the U.S. Postal Service, unless there are serious problems there that have been going on for a while. And that are that are quite frustrating. If stuff were getting fixed in a day or two, nearly all of those complaints would go away. The photos that you had of the mail being stacked really in disarray. And what you know is clearly a chaotic looking fashion is very, is very, very disturbing,” Stiedler said.

We contacted the offices of Senators Jon Tester and Steve Daines of Montana, who within a day of our correspondence wrote letters to USPS leaders asking for permanent solutions.

That might be easier said than done, but for now expect to see a lot more USPS job fairs with managers hoping they’ll deliver a solution.

Matt Imwalle is the manager at the Lakewood, Ohio USPS.

“This is going to go all summer long. We’re going to keep doing this until we get the employees we need to have,” Imwalle said.

Steidler says more trouble lies ahead if it doesn’t get worked out before the USPS hits the peak holiday season and November in an election year.

: newsy.com

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Is America’s Economy Entering a New Normal?

The pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine, have altered how America’s economy functions. While economists have spent months waiting for conditions to return to normal, they are beginning to wonder what “normal” will mean.

Some of the changes are noticeable in everyday life: Work from home is more popular, burrito bowls and road trips cost more, and buying a car or a couch made overseas is harder.

But those are all symptoms of broader changes sweeping the economy — ones that could be a big deal for consumers, businesses and policymakers alike if they linger. Consumer demand has been hot for months now, workers are desperately wanted, wages are climbing at a rapid clip, and prices are rising at the fastest pace in four decades as vigorous buying clashes with roiled supply chains. Interest rates are expected to rise higher than they ever did in the 2010s as the Federal Reserve tries to rein in inflation.

History is full of big moments that have changed America’s economic trajectory: The Great Depression of the 1930s, the Great Inflation of the 1970s and the Great Recession of 2008 are examples. It’s too early to know for sure, but the changes happening today could prove to be the next one.

kept at it.

Now, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens the global geopolitical order, yet another shock disrupting trade and the economic system.

For Washington policymakers, Wall Street investors and academic economists, the surprises have added up to an economic mystery with potentially far-reaching consequences. The economy had spent decades churning out slow and steady growth clouded by weak demand, interest rates that were chronically flirting with rock bottom and tepid inflation. Some are wondering if, after repeated shocks, that paradigm could change.

“For the last quarter century, we’ve had a perfect storm of disinflationary forces,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said in response to a question during a public appearance this week, noting that the old regime had been disrupted by a pandemic, a large spending and monetary policy response and a war that was generating “untold” economic uncertainty. “As we come out the other side of that, the question is: What will be the nature of that economy?” he said.

began to raise interest rates this month in a bid to cool the economy down and temper high inflation, and Mr. Powell made clear this week that the central bank planned to keep lifting them — perhaps aggressively. After a year of unpleasant price surprises, he said, the Fed will set policy based on what is happening, not on an expected return to the old reality.

“No one is sitting around the Fed, or anywhere else that I know of, just waiting for the old regime to come back,” Mr. Powell said.

The prepandemic normal was one of chronically weak demand. The economy today faces the opposite issue: Demand has been supercharged, and the question is whether and when it will moderate.

Before, globalization had weighed down both pay and price increases, because production could be moved overseas if it grew expensive. Gaping inequality and an aging population both contributed to a buildup of savings stockpiles, and as money was held in safe assets rather than being put to more active use, it seemed to depress growth, inflation and interest rates across many advanced economies.

Japan had been stuck in the weak-inflation, slow-growth regime for decades, and the trend seemed to be spreading to Europe and the United States by the 2010s. Economists expected those trends to continue as populations aged and inequality persisted.

Then came the coronavirus. Governments around the world spent huge amounts of money to get workers and businesses through lockdowns — the United States spent about $5 trillion.

The era of deficient demand abruptly ended, at least temporarily. The money, which is still chugging out into the U.S. economy from consumer savings accounts and state and local coffers, helped to fuel strong buying, as families snapped up goods like lawn mowers and refrigerators. Global supply chains could not keep up.

were able to raise prices without losing customers, they did so. And as workers saw their grocery and Seamless bills swelling, airfares climbing and kitchen renovations costing more, they began to ask their employers for more money.

Companies were rehiring as the economy reopened from the pandemic and to meet the burst in consumption, so labor was in high demand. Workers began to win the raises they wanted, or to leave for new jobs and higher pay. Some businesses began to pass rising labor costs along to customers in the form of higher prices.

The world of slow growth, moderate wage gains and low prices evaporated — at least temporarily. The question now is whether things will settle back down to their prepandemic pattern.

The argument for a return to prepandemic norms is straightforward: Supply chains will eventually catch up. Shoppers have a lot of money in savings accounts, but those stockpiles will eventually run out, and higher Fed interest rates will further slow spending.

As demand moderates, the logic goes, forces like population aging and rampant inequality will plunge advanced economies back into what many economists call “secular stagnation,” a term coined to describe the economic malaise of the 1930s and revived by the Harvard economist Lawrence H. Summers in the 2010s.

Fed officials mostly think that reversion will happen. Their estimates suggest that low inflation and slow growth will be back within a few years, and that interest rates will not have to rise above 3 percent to achieve that moderation. Market pricing also suggests inflation will slow with time, albeit to higher levels than investors expected in 2018 and 2019.

But some of today’s trends look poised to linger, at least for a while. Job openings are plentiful, but the working-age population is growing glacially, immigration has slowed, and people are only gradually returning to work from the labor market’s sidelines. Labor shortages are fueling faster wage gains, which could sustain demand and enable companies to charge higher prices.

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Is America’s Economy Entering a New Normal?

The Russia-Ukraine War and the Global Economy