Uncommon Knowledge
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California
California “snow deluges” expected to decline significantly by 2100
Extreme snowfall will become less common in California by 2100, a new study found.
Scientists understand how a lack of snow or “snow drought” can affect a region, especially in the midst of a warming climate. However, before now, they did not understand the impact of unusually high levels of snow. And this is becoming more important, as California has just emerged from its second winter of high snowfall.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences used the 2023 winter as a case study to learn more. Computational hydrologist Adrienne Marshall and colleagues from the Colorado School of Mines dubbed the term “snow deluges” to describe the phenomenon recently seen in California.
To reach their findings, they analyzed the unusual snow deluge across the Sierra Nevada mountains in 2023 to assess the impact of “high snow years.”
Dave Fleishman – Just a Little Light Fine Photography/Getty
In 2023, California saw an extremely high amount of snow accumulation, with record snowpack levels. Observations showed the accumulations were a “once-in-54-years event,” with some areas reporting “once-in-320-years accumulations,” the study reported.
By looking at climate projections, scientists found that years like these with the so-called “snow deluges” are set to decline by 58 percent by the end of this century. Years with median levels of snowfall are also estimated to decline by 73 percent, they reported.
“California’s massive snow year of 2023 was record-breaking at 42 percent of snow monitoring sites,” Marshall told Newsweek. “Climate models indicate that in warmer future climates, our biggest snow years will be smaller than our biggest snow years now. Another way of putting this is that a snow deluge like we saw in 2023 would be much more rare in a warmer climate like that we might expect later in the 21st century.”
Similar patterns will also be seen across the wider Western U.S., the study reports.
The findings “underscore the significance of uncovering the impact of climate change on the dynamics of snow deluges and snow droughts in mountainous regions,” the study reports.
“These findings align with a bigger scientific picture that shows declining average snowpack and more frequent snow droughts in California and throughout the West,” Marshall said. “Our new findings suggest that we shouldn’t count on big snow years like the one we had last year to save us in warmer climates.
“This is important because snow acts as a natural reservoir in the mountains that stores water until the late spring and summer when we need it most. Our best opportunities to avoid the worst consequences of this snow loss lie in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and finding ways to adapt to adapt to changing snow and water availability.”
The study notes that snow deluges can be “both destructive and beneficial” meaning better understanding of the phenomenon can improve management of “snow-dependent ecosystems and economies.”
The 2023 snow deluge in California, in many ways, could be seen as good thing. Before it occurred, the state had been suffering from prolonged drought conditions. As a result, there was a severe lack of snowpack in the surrounding mountains, meaning less water was feeding the state’s reservoirs.
The large snow build-up, however, meant that come spring, it melted into rivers and reservoirs, saving the state from a water crisis. In fact, drought conditions in the state officially ended.
However, the heavy snowfall indicates that climate change is worsening, as weather patterns become more unpredictable and extreme. While the drought has ended for now, climate change could cause another prolonged dry period in the future.
“Snow is important for both ecosystems and water resources, and there’s a lot still to learn about how our biggest snow years—or the loss of them—impact these systems,” Marshall said. “The present study focuses on annual-scale snow deluges, but the largest individual snowfall events could change in different ways.
“We focused on a moderate warming scenario in California and the Western U.S., but it would also be helpful to learn more about how different climate scenarios could affect snow deluges in other parts of the world.”
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about California snowfall? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
A 40-year-old Los Angeles man was charged with murder after allegedly killing his girlfriend and kidnapping their young child before fleeing to Mexico, according to authorities.
Ruben Fregosojuarez has been charged one count of murder and one misdemeanor count of child abuse under circumstance or conditions other than great bodily injury or death, according to a Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office news release. Authorities first identified him as Ruben Fregoso but Los Angeles County prosecutors listed him as Ruben Fregosojuarez.
On Monday around 12:39 p.m., the Los Angeles Police Department conducted a welfare check in the 2600 block of South Alsace Avenue in West Adams, police said in a news release.
Officers found a woman dead inside the home “as a result of violence” and the woman’s daughter missing, police said. On Monday night, the California Highway Patrol issued an Amber Alert for the child, Daleza.
Photos obtained by NBC4 appear to show Fregosojuarez in a parking garage in San Ysidro with the girl on Sunday. The California Highway Patrol has listed her age as 4 years old but Los Angeles police say the girl is 5. She is also described as the suspect’s daughter.
The alert said that the girl was last seen with Fregosojuarez, who allegedly abducted her in a 2019 Land Rover Discovery, on Sunday at about 4 a.m.
The CHP posted in an update that the vehicle was found but that the child and man were still missing. The girl is described as 3 feet tall, 45 pounds, and having black hair and brown eyes.
California’s attorney general is suing the consumer genetics testing company formerly known as 23andMe, alleging the company failed to protect customers’ sensitive personal information in a massive 2023 data breach that exposed the ancestry and genetic data of nearly 7 million people.
Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit on Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court against Chrome Holding Co., formerly known as 23andMe, accusing the company of failing to properly investigate or respond to numerous warnings that its systems had been compromised. The company’s mail-in self-testing kits became synonymous with DNA testing before it filed for bankruptcy in 2025.
In 2023, cybercriminals breached 23andMe’s systems by using a “credential-stuffing attack,” which involves bombarding online accounts with huge sets of user names and passwords stolen in previous unrelated attacks. Over a period of months, the intruders were able to make off with the personal data of more than 6.9 million people.
“23andMe’s security measures were so lax that the threat actor was able to operate undetected within 23andMe’s systems for over five months, and remarkably, 23andMe only began investigating after the threat actor offered the stolen user data for sale on the dark web and reached out to 23andMe to demand a ransom,” Bonta’s office said in the complaint.
The San Francisco-based company, which allowed people to submit genetic materials and get a snapshot of their ancestry, revealed in October 2023 that hackers had accessed customer information in the prolonged data breach that targeted customers with Chinese or Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. The stolen data of more than 1 million Asian-Pacific Islander and Ashkenazi Jewish users was later posted for sale on the dark web.
“The sale of this data on the dark web took place amidst a period of mounting anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander and antisemitic hate and violence,” Bonta said in a press release. “This is disturbing and incredibly dangerous.”
A January 2024 lawsuit accused the company of not doing enough to protect its customers and not notifying certain customers that their data had been targeted specifically. It later settled the lawsuit for $30 million.
23andMe representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
At its peak, 23andMe became the best-known name in the emerging area of DNA self-testing, with users paying upwards of $99 for kits that gave them insights into their genetic makeup, potential relatives and ancestry. But the company’s momentum slowed down in recent years after its $3.5 billion public offering in 2021.
Last July, TTAM Research Institute, a nonprofit led by Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s cofounder and former CEO, acquired 23andMe’s assets for $305 million.
Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, signed legislation Wednesday that aims to shield California elections from federal interference, saying he expected Donald Trump’s administration to try to meddle in the midterms this year.
The law, which took effect immediately and came days before next Tuesday’s primary, prohibits any person – including federal agents – from accessing voter rolls or election technology without a court order. Law enforcement officers are restricted from disrupting election workers, except in public safety emergencies.
Trump administration officials so far have said they have no plans to send immigration agents to polling locations across the US, a concern raised this year by several Democratic secretaries of state. But Newsom warned “we have to be prepared for everything” because “there’s no rules any more with the Trump administration”.
Voting is already under way in California’s closely watched primary for governor, where a crowded field of Democrats and two viable Republicans are vying for just two spots on the November ballot. Under the state’s open primary system, only the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.
Newsom, who cannot seek a third term, said the election law is a response to “legitimate anxiety” about Trump’s tactics, primarily in Democratic-led states, where the president has deployed federal agents over the objections of local leaders. The Democratic governor warned against underestimating someone who “doesn’t believe in free and fair elections”.
“I expect the worst with Trump because he’s done the worst,” he said at a news conference.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the Associated Press later Wednesday that Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections.
“Instead of levying false attacks at the President, Newscum should look in the mirror,” she said in a statement, using Trump’s derogatory nickname for Newsom.
In an interview last year with Vanity Fair, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, knocked down the idea that Trump would deploy the military to suppress voting, saying it was “categorically false”.
The California law also makes it a crime to knowingly take voted ballots out of the custody of election officials.
Earlier this year, the FBI under Trump seized the 2020 general election ballots from Georgia’s most populous county, which is heavily Democratic and has long been at the center of the president’s false claims that fraud cost him the race. The FBI and justice department also have sought records from previous elections in the largest counties in Arizona and Michigan.
Trump triggered a national redistricting frenzy ahead of the midterms when he urged Republicans in Texas and elsewhere to redraw their US House districts to help the party retain control of the closely divided chamber. Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Tennessee also have enacted new maps that could benefit Republicans, and Louisiana is expected to be next.
Republicans so far think they could gain as many as 14 seats from redistricting in November, while Democrats think they could gain six in California and Utah.
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