Mount Shasta’s early snowmelt a sign of future
Mount Shasta has long symbolized the grandeur of California’s far north, its muscular flanks and thick cover of snow an enduring expression of nature’s bounty.
But this summer, the north state’s tallest peak is looking a little frail. Its slopes are drab and dusty, and most of the snow has melted away. Locals say they haven’t seen the mountain so barren in years, if not decades.
The 14,163-foot volcano near the Oregon border, climate experts say, has become a casualty of California’s intense heat and drought, as well as a glaring illustration of what the extremes of climate change can mean for Western landscapes.
“It’s pretty much just an ugly brown, not the picture we think of with Mount Shasta,” said David Rizzardo, a hydrology manager for the California Department of Water Resources, who has family in the area. “Maybe we thought Mount Shasta was immune (to climate change).
But now it’s clearly showing the stress from extreme conditions.”
The hard times for the mountain come to bear after two severely dry winters. Its snowpack was only about half of average this spring. Then June’s record heat wave arrived, pushing temperatures on the slopes to rare triple digits, and prompting a sharp and sudden snow melt-off.
This disappearance of snow not only dimmed Mount Shasta’s famously verdant facade, but it exposed structural weakness. Heavy runoff whisked mud and debris off the sides of the mountain, resulting in a series of slides that have been washing out roads and trails since the start of summer.
Residents have routinely reported the thundering booms of boulders and trees crashing down drainages.
“It’s been a bit of a mess up here this year,” said Tyanna Blaschak, a hydrologist for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, which manages the mountain and surrounding lands.
Part of the problem, she said, stems from the retreating glaciers.
The lack of snow has left the mountain’s seven named glaciers more exposed to sun and heat, hastening the thawing of these once vast ice sheets that help define Mount Shasta’s physique. The melting ice has joined the snowmelt in exacerbating the runoff.
“The conditions we’re seeing this year might not necessarily be a one-off thing,” Blaschak said “If we keep having continued drought and below-average snowpack and hot summers ... it’s something to watch out for.”
The melting of the glaciers is also being monitored.
While rising global temperatures have long been shrinking the mountain’s ice sheets, not unlike what’s going on in other alpine areas of the world, a spate of several drought years in California over the past decade has been particularly difficult for Mount Shasta.
The mountain’s longest glacier, the Whitney Glacier on the north side, has lost about a quarter of its length since 2005, according to Mauri Pelto, director of the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project and a professor of environmental science at Nichols College in Massachusetts. The glacier now covers about half the area it did in 1981.
It’s also breaking into two
because there’s not enough ice flow to keep it together.
“The biggest, strongest member of the glacier family is coming apart at the seams. That can’t be a good sign for the rest of the glacier family up there,” Pelto said.
This year, the Whitney Glacier is on track to lose another 10% of its volume,
Pelto said. He called it “not a recipe for very long duration.”
What makes this summer’s saga on Mount Shasta particularly stark is that it’s playing out so soon in the year. Typically, the effects of heat and dryness come later, as the snow lingers through even the warm June and July months before dissipating in
September or October.
From many places along Interstate 5, where travelers can’t help but gape at the towering volcano, snow has been hard to see for weeks.
“It’s very common that you have no snow visible from the southwest side, but not this early,” said Andy Calvert, scientist in charge of the California
Volcano Observatory for the U.S. Geological Survey. “This is the driest I’ve seen it (in summer).”
Recently, though, getting any clear view of the mountain has been difficult because of smoke. The Lava Fire has been burning just northwest of Mount Shasta since July 24, while the larger Dixie Fire to the east and Monument Fire to the west have similarly strained the area’s air quality.
The Shasta-Trinity National Forest is among nine national forests that were closed to the public Monday through Labor Day because of wildfire danger. The closure comes at the heart of Mount Shasta’s climbing season.
Meanwhile, federal water officials are contending with the lack of water in Shasta Lake, south of the mountain and reliant on the peak’s runoff. The lake is the largest reservoir in California and a key part of the Central Valley Project, which serves much of the state’s agriculture industry. The reservoir on Tuesday was 28% full, about 43% of where it usually stands at this date.
“It’s just has been a really tough year,” Calvert said.