Coconino's Cooper French pins his Lake Havasu opponent Wednesday afternoon during a match at Coconino High School.
Coconino's Cooper French pins his Lake Havasu opponent Wednesday afternoon during a match at Coconino High School.
Coconino's Cooper French pins his Lake Havasu opponent Wednesday afternoon during a match at Coconino High School.
Coconino's Cooper French pins his Lake Havasu opponent Wednesday afternoon during a match at Coconino High School.
A collapsed hoop house at the U.S. Geological Survey on Switzer Mesa collapsed under the weight of snow following a series of winter storms that dropped more than 3 feet of snow on Flagstaff. The three hoop houses are part of an experiment to test drought tolerance of native plants from the Colorado Plateau.
A collapsed hoop house at the U.S. Geological Survey on Switzer Mesa collapsed under the weight of snow following a series of winter storms that dropped more than 3 feet of snow on Flagstaff. The three hoop houses are part of an experiment to test drought tolerance of native plants from the Colorado Plateau.
A parking awning at The Summit at Flagstaff apartment complex on Soliere Avenue toppled over under severe snowload following a series of winter storms that dropped more than 3 feet of snow on the city.
A parking awning at The Summit at Flagstaff apartment complex on Soliere Avenue toppled over under severe snowload following a series of winter storms that dropped more than 3 feet of snow on the city.
A hazy Mount Elden looms over North San Francisco Street Tuesday morning as snow continues to fall from a winter weather system that moved into Flagstaff Saturday night.
Flagstaff has started 2023 drought-free.
As of Tuesday, Jan. 10, the U.S. Drought Monitor declared over 27% of Arizona, including the part of Coconino County that encompasses Flagstaff, as experiencing no drought. Three months ago, no percentage of the state fell into that category.
And while this measurement speaks only to short-term conditions, it could be an early predictor of a coming fire season that is more tame than the extended, extremely dry seasons of recent past.
There are two major factors that have contributed to Flagstaff’s emergence from drought, said National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist Brian Klimowski of the Flagstaff station.
“The copious moisture we had over the monsoon combined with our recent snowfall and rainfall has brought us out of a drought status in the local area,” Klimowski said.
August 2022 climate summaries from the Flagstaff regions showed the city recorded about 180% of its normal rainfall levels for the month, concluding what Klimowski called a “remarkable” monsoon season. The season also began about two weeks earlier than normal.
As of mid-January, Flagstaff’s winter has also brought above-average moisture. The NWS station recorded on Sunday record snowfall — 14.8 inches — that shattered the previous daily record of 8.9 inches. But more importantly, a good run of winter storms has raised the region’s snowpack well above the median.
“Right now, across the western Mogollon Rim and much of the high terrain in northern Arizona, we’re well over 200% of our normal snowpack,” Klimowski said.
As of Tuesday, the National Water and Climate Center reported that snowpack on the San Francisco Peaks was equal to 16.7 inches of rainfall. The median peak measurement for the area is 16.8 inches — and it usually takes until March 19 for snowpack to hit that peak level.
“We can certainly say that this winter’s snowpack is very beneficial,” Klimowski said. “The fact that we have the moisture locked up in the snow is very important because it’s going to melt slowly into the soils and cause some very beneficial response for our forests, streams and reservoirs.”
He added that a forecast slow-thaw means that while northern Arizona waterways will see increased levels, flooding is not a great concern.
“It’s probably going to be a more measured melt,” Klimowski said. “It won’t cause anything catastrophic.”
According to U.S. Geological Survey readings of Newman Canyon — the waterway that drains into Flagstaff’s local reservoir Lake Mary — stream flows have been up since the beginning of the year. The readings were well under 1 cubic feet per second through most of December but raised to a peak of 155 cubic feet per second on Jan. 3.
How this most recent level of snowpack will impact this stream remains to be seen, but at around the same time last year, these stream flows topped out under 2 cubic feet per second.
Nonetheless, when it comes Flagstaff reaching peak snowpack, earlier is not better, Klimowski said.
“We want to see is that peak as late in the season as possible,” he explained. “Because the later that peak is, the more moisture is going to be available to delay the fire season.”
“The only question is, ‘Will we continue to get moisture which will delay the onset of our fire season?’” he added. “And right now, it’s starting to look favorable that, yes, that might happen.”
That’s certainly the hope for Matt McGrath, district ranger for the Coconino National Forest’s Flagstaff District. He recalled how in 2019 late February snowpack had a dampening effect on fire season.
“We didn’t even go into fire restrictions that year,” McGrath said. “We had a little bit of a wet spring, so that late snow and the wet spring led to no restriction.”
Compared to 2022, in which a warm, dry January contributed to an early-onset fire season that saw the Tunnel Fire — one the worst in the region’s history — ignite in mid-April, there’s cause to be hopeful that current conditions will result in a more “normal” fire season, McGrath said.
“Hopefully that’s the direction we’re trending right now,” he added. “It’s just a little bit early to say.”
But in the long term, McGrath said, it will take more than one good season to truly restore forest health after the decades of drought that has plagued northern Arizona and the West in general.
To illustrate the extremity of dryness in the region, McGrath pointed to the massive amounts of pinyon-juniper die-off observable just northeast of Flagstaff. At first, many thought it was some kind of beetle infestation that had killed these trees.
“It really wasn’t,” McGrath said. “It was just the drought — and these are trees that are used to living in a relatively dry environment. It was just too extremely dry.”
While early 2023 may be drought-free for Flagstaff, the U.S. Drought Monitor reports that only about 14% of the Western United States is experiencing no drought. That percentage is up significantly — a year ago it was about 4% — but it still leaves about 26% of the West registering as “abnormally dry,” 26% in “moderate drought,” 25% in “severe drought,” and almost 9% in “extreme or exceptional” drought.
“It is going to take several years of normal or above-normal precipitation to get back into that balance,” McGrath said.
If one needs proof that drought still grips the West, look no further than the major reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, Klimowski said. As of Tuesday, Lake Powell was 175 feet below full pool and at 22.6% of its capacity. Lake Mead was 184 feet below full pool.
“Those are still significantly down,” Klimowski said. “That would be an indicator of our continuing long-term drought.”
Sean Golightly can be reached at sgolightly@azdailysun.com.
A sign on the fence outside a drought-tolerance experimental site at the U.S. Geological Survey explains the experiments being conducted under a series of hoop houses. One of the hoop houses partially collapsed under the weight of snow following a series of winter storms.
A sign on the fence outside a drought-tolerance experimental site at the U.S. Geological Survey explains the experiments being conducted under a series of hoop houses. One of the hoop houses partially collapsed under the weight of snow following a series of winter storms.
Coconino County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue volunteers load a snowboarder who broke his leg into an ambulance in this 2017 photo.
Coconino County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue volunteers load a snowboarder who broke his leg into an ambulance in this 2017 photo.
A Prius waits at the light at North San Francisco Street and West Forest Avenue carrying a large snow cap Wednesday morning.
Just after 4:20 p.m. on Tuesday a call came into the Flagstaff Fire Department for an injury accident — and the patient was effectively snowed in.
A woman living near The Arboretum at Flagstaff had fallen at home and sustained a serious leg injury.
Despite the fact that Flagstaff fire engines are fitted with rear-wheel chains when facing snowy conditions, the challenge of dealing with a large amount of snow led first responders to opt for a different mode of transportation.
“We sent a four-wheel-drive truck from the fire department with a plow. This person had a leg injury ... and we weren’t able to access them,” said Josh Crane, the public information officer with the fire department.
According to Crane, the person’s home was too far a distance from accessible roads to reach by foot, so the Coconino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Unit was called to assist.
Search and rescue deployed its snowcat, a fully tracked machine designed to tackle deep snow and transport up to eight people at a time if needed.
“This is heated. It actually has an opening where the driver and the navigator sit,” John Penna, a search and rescue volunteer, said when describing the interior of the vehicle. “There’s another couple of seats behind them, but there’s actually a hole that goes into the back that allows a litter to be brought in, and the EMT can sit right by the head of the patient and keep that communication going.”
Using the snowcat, first responders were able to get the patient who injured her leg to a waiting ambulance safely. According to Crane, the rescue took between nearly three hours.
“The patient was stable. Access was the biggest thing, getting to her,” Crane said.
On other calls during the wild week of snowy weather, Crane said, firefighters have had to shovel through deep snow to gain access to homes.
“It’s no fault of the city or county, they’ve done a great job, but there’s so much snow in such a small amount of time,” Crane said.
In addition to employing chains on fire engines, emergency responders also use four-wheel-drive ambulances. With the exception of more remote places — such as the home near The Arboretum at Flagstaff Crane mentioned — firefighters say they’ve been able to get where they need to be in the city limits.
When snow accumulation is a barrier, Crane said, teams don’t hesitate to call in reinforcements — such as search and rescue.
When firefighters during times of inclement weather are called to emergencies, it sounds a bit different than usual.
Ordinarily, first responders in the region operate using more than a dozen radio channels — often those channels are dedicated to specific purposes such as fires and emergency maintenance calls.
Damage to equipment on Mount Elden, a result of heavy snow, has posed communication challenges for firefighters.
“We had some radio problems,” Crane said. “In our immediate radio bank, we have 16 channels. Each one has a different purpose. It’s been limited down to three or four. We’ve lost three-quarters of our channels. It started around day two of the storm. We were running all communications in the entire region off one or two channels. Right now there’s still some radio issues ... we’re definitely not up to normal operations.”
Despite running communication through fewer channels, Crane said, the area’s first responders are coping just fine.
“It hasn’t caused a delay in response or a delay in dispatch,” Crane said, explaining that there have been strategies in place to try to keep the channels from getting clogged when crashes or incidents happen at the same time. “We’ve just had to adapt quite a bit.”
When Crane spoke to the Arizona Daily Sun Wednesday morning, he’d just returned from a call — one of many since winter storms descended the area Saturday. A semitruck had skidded for more than 150 yards along a rail guard while attempting to stop on the freeway after the driver spotted another crash ahead. No one was injured in the incident.
“Right now what we’re seeing is the roads look clear and have some snowpack, so people aren’t really changing their speed. People are driving 75 miles per hour on the freeway,” Crane said, explaining that the semitruck incident happened on “black pavement” that looked clear from the driver’s seat.
Crane said drivers should reduce speeds on freeways, even where the blacktop is visible. He’s observed drivers failing to reduce speed or struggling to slow down when they see an emergency or crash ahead — compounding accidents.
“We went on three [calls] yesterday involving vehicles. Two of the three had secondary accidents because people were going too fast coming up on another accident,” Crane said.
Crane’s shift started Tuesday, and since then he said the department has been busy responding to slips, trips and falls on the ice as well as collisions.
As the snowfall lets up, another kind of concern has emerged.
“The one thing that we noticed is after these storms there’s oftentimes wind that’s associated with it. Snowdrifts will push snow near vent pipes on roofs. Because those vents aren’t venting properly, we’ve had a few CO calls because of the inability for those pipes to vent properly.” Crane said. “If you have the ability to, try and make sure those are clear. If not, have a professional get on your roof and clear it for you. If you’re in your house and feeling nauseous or have a headache with no obvious explanation, that’s a really good reason to call 911 so that we can come over and check CO levels.”
Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas that can displace oxygen in the air. In addition to keeping an eye on your vents this winter,, Flagstaff firefighters also recommend having and maintaining a carbon monoxide detector in your home.
Sierra Ferguson can be reached at sierra.ferguson@lee.net.
