Atmospheric rivers

In the last year, I've heard a lot about atmospheric rivers, so I asked hydrologist David Hoekema what they were. The atmospheric river is a concept that was developed about ten years ago. I could be off on that. It's used to describe whenever there's a long trail of moisture coming in off the Pacific, we can have two types of snowpack development or a mix of the two. Some years we just get storm systems that are sweeping in off the Pacific and the snowpack gradually builds. And then some years we'll have these atmospheric river events where you get this long train of moisture coming in off the Pacific, and you end up with almost a stair step type construction to the snowpack. And if you get 3 or 4 atmospheric rivers, that's usually enough in southern Idaho to give you a full snowpack. So in January, we had a long dry spell because of good snowfall. Around Christmas time, we were above average and then we plateaued. But that event around Christmas time also was an atmospheric river, so it really built up the snowpack. And if you look at the way it's building, it looks almost like a stair step, those two types of years. Of course, you can also get a year like 2022 where it just flat lines for months. That's not good. Pacific in January lining up for a wetter February. And even though the snowpack was starting to drop, especially in eastern Idaho. Speaker1: A complete explanation.