Snow in the Rocky Mountains eventually feeds the all-important Colorado River with water that more than 40 million people depend on.

This week on Nevada Week, an update on the snowpack in the Rockies and what it may mean for drought conditions.

Plus, how sustainable are ski resorts like Lee Canyon in a warming climate?

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

Welcome to Nevada Week; I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

We'll talk snowpack in a moment, but first a look at the most recent climate change report from the United Nations.

It outlined some of the dire consequences the world is already facing because of greenhouse gas emissions.

I went to the campus of UNLV to speak with Kristin Averyt, senior climate advisor to Governor Steve Sisolak's office, about the report's findings.

The United Nations report on climate change that was released at the end of February paints a difficult picture.

It says that climate change is already endangering the lives and livelihoods of people around the world.

How exactly is it doing that?

(Kristen Averyt) Climate change has really been impacting us all for quite a while, and here in Southern Nevada, climate is really manifested through impacts to our water cycle and water resources, and extreme heat.

Those are really the two things that we see on the ground here in Nevada in terms of the impacts of climate change.

There's a couple of ways to think about it.

First of all climate change is happening, it's impacting us now, and make no mistake, it is us and we're the ones causing it.

Right now the drought that we're experiencing, there's research that just came out that the drought of the last 20 years here in the Southwest, it's unprecedented in the last 1,200 years.

And if you look at major climate events 65 million years ago, 100-plus million years ago, this is still unprecedented.

Those events were major geological or interplanetary sorts of events, but this is all about us.

And the consensus across the scientific community is climate change is being driven by burning of fossil fuels and human activity.

-And more about the dangerous aspect of climate change.

What are Southern Nevadans already facing as a result of climate change?

-Well, one of the things that the IPCC report does say is that we are not keeping pace with the rate of change in terms of the climate impacts.

In other words, we're not adapting fast enough to the changes that are coming at us.

But here in Southern Nevada, we're doing a pretty good job with respect to our water resources; for example, ensuring that we have aggressive conservation measures.

And now the governor announced we're launching a statewide heat plan, so that way we can make sure we are all coordinated when those really intense heat waves hit our region.

-And when you ta4lk about how dangerous heat waves can be, I think Southern Nevadans might think well, we face triple-digit temperatures here every summer.

So why should they be worried?

-With respect to extreme heat, one thing to understand is across the entire U.S., there are more deaths every year associated with extreme heat than any other major climate or weather event.

So that's any hurricane, any flood, any sort of tornado.

Extreme heat, there's a lot of problems with respect to how it impacts our health.

And it's not just-- it's not just in terms of physically making us sick, but we can't work maybe.

There's a lot of different things, a lot of different ways that extreme heat manifests and impacts us.

-You brought up heat waves and how dangerous they can be.

I was a little confused with the Pacific Northwest heat waves last summer that killed so many people.

Why did so many people die there when we face similar temperatures here every summer?

-I think one thing with respect to the heat wave that we saw in the Pacific Northwest is their infrastructure couldn't really handle it because they weren't really built for living in an extreme temperature regime.

So what we saw in the Pacific Northwest, that's something we might be seeing playing out in other parts of the country.

That said, the mortalities we saw in the Pacific Northwest, that's not to say they don't happen here, we just might not hear about it.

The other thing is it could be maybe the extreme heat triggers another illness; it's a comorbidity.

so that's something we also need to be looking at is maybe heat is the killer, but maybe it's a heart attack or it's something else.

And so really trying to parse that out can sometimes be very difficult from the perspective of health tracking.

-You also brought up about the dangers of working outside, that it might become too hot for some people to work outside.

How much of that are we already seeing?

-I would say if you look at different parts of the world where there are extreme heat regimes, you're seeing changes in terms of how people are actually living and working.

So for example living and working at night, taking the middle of the day where everybody in some ways hibernates in the middle of the day, so there are things like that.

There are ways that we can cope and adapt to extreme heat moving forward.

-One way to solve the climate change problem is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which we will get to, but the other is adapting, adaptation.

So how can Southern Nevadans continue to adapt, and how have they already been adapting?

-I think one thing about being here in Southern Nevada, we live in a desert.

We know we live in a desert, and we act like we live in the desert.

So we're doing a really good job I think thus far adapting and remaining resilient to the impacts of climate change because we see it and it's happening to us now and I'm fully confident that we're going to be able to work together to continue to adapt and make sure this is a livable and thriving place.

-The Southern Nevada Water Authority is already taking some measures to reduce the amount of water being used in Southern Nevada.

What can you tell me about that?

-I think there's a lot of different opportunities that are outlined in the Southern Nevada Water Authority's strategic plan.

There's a lot of different things that we can do and ways we can employ water conservation.

It is going to take all of us though, and it is going to require in some ways social change.

We're going to have to change the way that we do things and the way we operate.

But we all have to be willing to do that across the board when it comes to the impacts of climate change, whether we're talking about water, whether we're talking about extreme heat, whether we're talking about wildfire.

Things are changing, and we need to change appropriately as well.

There was a bill passed in the last legislative session that was introduced by Assemblyman Howard Watts, and that bill was about removing ornamental turf.

So essentially that's grass that nobody's using.

It's the grass that might be on the median or at the entrance to an HOA.

It's grass that nobody is using, and that accounts for something like 10% of all the water used in this part of the state.

So by removing that, we're saving a tremendous amount of water.

That's the kind of interesting policy we can promote that can help us to ensure that we have water moving forward, and we're the first in the country to do that.

-You brought up the 1,200 years.

There are some who would say climate change records have not been kept long enough for that to be an accurate representation of what was happening 1,200 years ago.

What would you say to that?

-I think that's a great question, and one of the reasons I really like it is that was the motivation for why I went to graduate school.

I was interested in hey, this climate change thing, is this really-- is this really novel, or is this something that's happened before?

That's actually what my research was when I was in graduate school 20-plus years ago.

It was about how has the climate changed in these massive, rapid events over the last 120 million years?

And right now this really truly is unprecedented.

-Overall, what has to be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

-We need to do everything we can to get to net-zero emissions as soon as possible because the impacts we're seeing today, these are the best-case scenarios moving forward.

Even if we got to net-zero emissions today, like zero, we still would be seeing impacts for probably another 10 years.

So we really need to be making decisions now to reduce greenhouse gases not even for my children, but for grandchildren.

That's what we need to do.

We need to be thinking about the future for them and making sure that it is a better future.

-And the last thing, how do you go about staying positive every day?

-You can't do much else.

But now truly, it's inspiring because it's about innovation, and we have a lot of opportunity to really change and show that we really care about one another and that we care about future generations, and we're going to do what we can collectively to move forward.

And we see that action, we see that happening in different places.

So I am optimistic that we can do it.

I'm on a university campus right now, and you can't help but be inspired when you talk to students who are about of course we can change the world, and of course we're going to change the future.

We're going to make it better for ourselves.

-In Southern Nevada, one of the most pressing problems connected to climate change is the drought.

Hotter and drier conditions around the western United States means less water in Lake Mead, which is where more than 2 million Las Vegas Valley residents get their water from.

Just how much water flows into Lake Mead is determined upstream in the snowpack of the Rocky Mountains.

Joining us to talk about this year's snowpack and what it could mean for the drought we are in is Paul Miller, service coordination hydrologist with the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.

Paul, welcome.

-Thanks for having me.

-What a title you have, and for those who don't understand exactly what snowpack is and what your role in relation to it is, could you briefly explain both of those?

(Paul Miller) Sure.

So the easy question is our role at the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center is to provide or adjust seasonal runoffs, mostly due to snowmelt from the mountains into the reservoirs that agencies like the Bureau of Reclamation operate like Lake Powell, like Lake Mead, so they can manage their water resources as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Here at the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, we work very hard with our stakeholders like Reclamation, like the State of Nevada and SNWA, to come up with the most accurate forecasts that we can.

And my fancy title is just a fancy way of saying that I'm the one who works with stakeholders to try and make sure that we're meeting their forecast needs.

-And snowpack is what exactly?

-So right now the snowpack in the Colorado River Basin is roughly hovering around 70-75% of normal depending on where you're looking at in the basin.

Depending on where you look, it's estimated that 90-95, even 98% of all the runoff in the Colorado River Basin originates as the snowpack in the upper Colorado River mountains.

-All right.

You mentioned 75% of normal.

That sounds pretty good to me, but would you agree that it may be misleading considering the average that was recently set by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration?

-Well, I don't know if I'd say it's misleading.

What's really hurt the basin is we've got these great reservoirs, right, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and even some upstream that have been designed to get us through really long periods of drought, and that's what we've been in.

We're really lucky that the reservoirs were basically full at the beginning of this drought which started around 2000.

So we've basically gone about 20 years in a very persistent drought that has been severe at times and until this past year, there was enough water in the Colorado River Basin, so that's been really beneficial.

I think what might be a bit misleading with regards to the snowpack numbers and the difference with normal is that it's not a one-to-one relationship between how much water is in the mountains and how much we see in the reservoirs.

Because of this drought, we have very dry soil moisture conditions, and that results in very inefficient runoff, so we lose a lot of that water to the soils and to the plants that have been really stressed by this persistent drought.

-I want to ask you more about the soil conditions ahead, but I want to go back to what I talked about with NOAA adjusting the average, and they recently did that.

It's something they do, I believe, every 10 years and it's based off the previous three decades.

So if the previous three decades have been hotter than normal, would you agree with that statement?

-Yes, and I guess to answer your question more directly, every 10 years NOAA and many organizations around the world, it's a world meteorologic organization standard, when we talk about 75% of normal, we're typically referring to the past 30-year period.

So right now our 30-year period is the 1991-2020 period, and because it's been drier and because there has been less water, that number is lower than the 1981-2010 average.

So for instance if I were to say we have 100,000 acre feet worth of water in a basin that normally gets say 200,000 acre feet, that would be 50% of average right now.

But in the past 30 years, maybe you've got 300,000 acre feet and it would have only been 33% of average just a few years ago.

So the percents of averages can be a little bit misleading if you're not aware of the magnitude.

-Right, because the last 30 years have been pretty hot and dry.

So then talking 75% compared to that average is not perhaps reflective of several decades prior to that.

So 75% of that average, do you consider that good?

-You know, I would consider it good if we hadn't had such a persistent drought.

Last couple years have been historically dry.

Last year was the third driest on record, and when you start to string these excessively dry years together and you're just constantly in this 50% to 70% of average, you know, it starts to stress the system.

-Right.

And a further stress on the system, which you had already talked a little bit about, are soil conditions.

How does that impact how much water actually makes its way to Lake Mead from that snowmelt?

-Sure.

So like I was mentioning to you earlier, we don't get 100% of the snowpack into our reservoir.

We have to fulfill-- the dry soil is going to take water as it comes down.

The plants that have not had access to water and the soils are going to start to take that water as well, so we don't get all the snow that was in the mountains.

You know, we have to fulfill these other reservoirs somehow to the soils, to the plants, before it makes its way to our stream and surface runoff into reservoirs.

-Yes.

You can just imagine when you put water on a dry piece of dirt, it just soaks right in.

It's not going to flow down and eventually make its way into a reservoir.

There's also an issue of snow versus rain.

And if we're talking about hotter temperatures, the rain may not turn into snow, and you're just getting rain, which is a good thing.

You know, when we get rain in the Las Vegas Valley we celebrate, but it's not exactly a long-term kind of solution, correct?

-Correct.

You can kind of think of the snowpack as sort of another reservoir that we have in the system and when we have that snowpack, it's up in the mountains at cooler temperatures.

It doesn't melt right away.

You're not losing as much water to evaporation.

You're not losing as much water to sublimation, or it just goes straight as a gas to the atmosphere.

So it's nice to have that snow kind of stored up there in the mountains.

When it's occurring more frequently as rain, which we've started to see a bit more of that especially at lower elevations, you start losing more water to evaporation, to transpiration rates with plants.

It gives the soils more opportunity to take that water.

There's a big benefit to keeping more snowfall as opposed to rainfall.

-And as you're aware, last year federal water managers declared the first-ever water shortage along the Colorado River resulting in cuts to the people who use that water.

What are you anticipating in the near future as far as cuts and how the average person may be impacted?

-Well, I think the average person typically isn't going to see much in the way of impacts unless, you know-- and I would defer to folks at the Southern Nevada Water Authority and other states' municipal water providers, because there's all kinds of incentives and disincentives that they can provide for using water as drought conditions.

So it could result in more costs, it could result in more watering restriction.

But a lot of the people that are going to see the brunt of the impact are agricultural users who aren't going to be seeing runoff when they typically would see it because it all has melted or it's melted earlier in the season outside of a typical growing season.

So I would say those are like the impacts of the more typical users.

As far as how it impacts shortage conditions, those are set by the Bureau of Reclamation who we work with very closely, and they make those determinations based on forecasts.

-Paul Miller, thank you so much for your time and information.

-Great.

Thanks for having me.

-We turn now to ski resorts which can compensate for low snowfall by making their own snow.

Whether that is a wise use of water and energy though is up for debate.

Lee Canyon, less than an hour outside of Las Vegas, is one of several ski resorts across the country that utilizes snowmaking, and this year the resort is not only reporting a good winter season but is preparing for a busy summer season also.

-Snow season has actually been really remarkable for us.

We had a little bit of a slow start to the season coming into December.

We got hit with some early storms that were really good storms for us, packed a big punch, brought the snow depths up for us and really opened the mountain up.

Josh Bean is diretor of mountain operations at Lee Canyon, and before he worked here, he played here.

(Josh Bean) Basically my whole life.

I think my earliest memories are on this mountain.

Through the years, Bean says he has not seen climate change have a dramatic impact on Lake Canyon, especially in comparison to resorts at lower elevations.

I haven't seen that much of a change.

You know, I remember years as a kid where you'd just be begging for it to snow because you wanted to go out and play, and the same as an adult.

Then the next year you're just happy it came back and you're out knee deep in powder.

So I don't think it's changed that much here in Lee Canyon.

You have to remember we're at a higher elevation than some of the other resorts.

We operate at 8,600 feet as a base elevation, so I think that we haven't been affected as much as some of the other resorts on the East Coast.

Still, Bean says resorts like Lee Canyon have come to rely on snowmaking.

We've always backfilled with snowmaking.

We introduced snowmaking in the mid '80s.

I think it was around '85 or '86 we brought snowmaking to the Lee Canyon area, so we've always opened up with snowmaking to kind of backfill when we have slow starts to the season.

We're told this is one of more than a dozen snow guns here at Lee Canyon used to make snow.

They run off of diesel generators, and staff say they are working to be mindful of when they use them.

Through snowmaking, efficiencies have grown.

We're definitely trying to reduce our carbon footprint as we go.

We look to use our efficiencies as best we can preseason.

We don't go after minimal temperatures anymore.

We get the biggest bang that we can for our buck when we start up our snowmaking system.

We don't just fire it up willy-nilly anymore.

We look for good temperatures and the timing to be right.

(Dan Hooper) Snowmaking definitely is a pretty energy-intensive process.

We've seen a lot of improvements in our snowmaking technology over the last few years going from when snowmaking really started being kind of very common through the '80s, and it was very energy inefficient.

Like a lot of technology, we've just seen huge improvements in that timeframe, that it's a very different world, very automated, very high-tech that's being able to pull down the amount of energy that we're using.

One of the challenges we have up here at Lee Canyon is there's no power in all of Lee Canyon.

So all the homes and other facilities in Lee Canyon, no power up here so we're running off diesel generators which definitely is not the best for the environment and something that we've been investing in, into more efficient power generation.

But ultimately for us, getting on the grid would be a great way that we could continue to decrease the impacts that we're having.

Snowmaking also requires a lot of water, which Lee Canyon says it pulls from an above-ground source in the Three Springs drainage basin.

Well, I feel great about it because what we do with the water, we're really not using it.

We're borrowing it for a time.

-We're really kind of borrowing the water through the winter.

We're pulling groundwater that we're then turning into snow that then is melting in the springtime and returning back into groundwater.

Dan Hooper of New Zealand is familiar with what consequences outdoor recreation can have on the environment.

The general manager of Lee Canyon says he's worked here for 11 years and was part of the resort's push to expand to include managed mountain biking trails.

This summer Lee Canyon will open its first mountain biking trails ever, which became possible after the resort and the Center for Biological Diversity reached an agreement on how to implement the trails while protecting an endangered butterfly.

One of the key pieces for us with that was making sure it was done in an environmentally responsible way, and specifically with the endangered Mount Charleston Blue Butterfly that we have up here at Lee Canyon and making sure any development we're doing was sort of in harmony with that.

So excited that we're able to move forward this summer with that, and when we talk about it being a managed experience, there's a lot of user-created trails and some limited Forest Service trails up here in the Spring Mountains, but being able to offer a trail system that's being maintained, and then on the safety side of things of having bike patrols-- think ski patrol but in the summertime-- that's going to be able to help out if someone has an injury or anything like that.

In the coming months, visitors to Lee Canyon will wear sneakers instead of skis.

The mountain biking is just a different way to use the mountain in the summertime.

As the resort maximizes its year-round capabilities with a watchful eye on the environment and community.

Lee Canyon, we're owned by Powdr which is an adventure lifestyle company based out of Park City, Utah who has a very solid commitment to the environment underneath our "play forever" commitment, which our "play forever" commitment is twofold: One side of it is about the commitment to the environment and us being enduring and here for the long term, and then also supporting the communities that we operate in.

We really see under that "play forever" commitment that not only what we can directly impact towards positive environmental initiatives but also getting our community behind initiatives as well.

-Well, because we want to keep doing this, and we want to see the future generations get to enjoy it the same way we have.

It's super fun to watch kids come up and grow up up here, and we want to prolong that for their future generations.

-A local man who may be checking those Lee Canyon bike trails out is professional BMX rider Ricardo Laguna.

This week on Nevada Week In Person, we spoke with him about how he got his start and a whole lot more.

(Ricardo Laguna) I was riding this little mountain bike, and I saw these kids jumping out a hole.

They said hey, we're riding BMX bikes and I was like I don't know what this sport is, but I want to tag along.

Who knows, two weeks later they told me this big national was going to happen on the BMX track, and we went there and I was like a little kid in the candy store, and that passion became a career.

-Nevada Week In Person airs Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. You can also find them anytime at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

That is also where you can find the resources discussed on this show including how to replace grass with desert landscaping and get a rebate from the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

To connect with us through social media, follow us on Facebook and Twitter at @nevadaweek.

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