Big Floods Across the Wasatch Front? -- Hear from Expert Consultant

Brian McInerney is a former chief hydrologist for the National Weather Service. He has come out of retirement to consult for Salt Lake County concerning how to best handle the massive runoff we are about to receive. McInerney appeared as a guest on a Utah Stories podcast where he offered several insights. The unprecedented nature of this year's snowpack is due to a few factors. Usually, there are just two major atmospheric rivers that might dominate the weather pattern in January, but this winter saw around 30. These “rivers” have dumped more than 900 inches of snow. Why now? Is this due to climate change?
“It could be,” McInerney says. “For every degree centigrade, you raise the atmospheric temperature, you get a seven percent increase in atmospheric moisture.” Heat has a compounding impact on the amount of moisture clouds can draw from the Pacific.
“It's literally ten times the carrying capacity of the Mississippi River in one band, in one atmospheric river,” he explains. “And it’s low-level moisture and it takes just a little bit of a bump for it to go up, and that is usually the mountains of California, and then it precipitates out a phenomenal amount.”

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