Mammoth Mountain ski area in California exceeded all-time snowfall record this past week. Mammoth Mountain surpassed its all-time record of snowfall this season with 702 inches recorded at the main lodge on Wednesday.

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The resort says historical snowfall records are kept at the Main Lodge. The previous record was in the 2010/2011 La Nina season which had a total of 668 inches.

The mountain’s peak, which is at an elevation of 11,053 feet, received over 870 inches of snow this season, leaving a base depth of 336 inches as of Wednesday, March 29.

Unlike 2021/22 which had 1 big month, 2022/23 had 5 signifiant snow months, with 220 in January and 192 inches in March.

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They expect ski lifts will be open to July.

Oh and the water level at Lake Oroville is 856.97 feet (95% of the max level 900 feet).

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BTW KSL AND FOX 13 In Salt Lake City report Utah has set a state record for snowfall with well over 800 inches in Alta. Alta Ski Area has received more than 2.5 feet of snow since Thursday morning, pushing its seasonal total to over 800 inches early Friday morning. As of noon, 809 inches of snow, or more than 67 feet, of snow have fallen in the area since October. The resort’s previous record - since at least 1980 - was 748 inches, which was broken last week.

“This endless winter continues to produce staggering snow totals,” resort officials wrote on social media and on its website. “Alta has received some of the highest snowfall totals on the planet.”

The main lodge at Mammoth Mountain in California has reached 618 inches (more than 50 feet) for the season. The record was 668 inches in 2010/11. At the summit, the seasonal total is at 784 inches (over 65 feet)

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The last time the resort had this much snow was during the 2016/2017 season, making this the second snowiest season for Mammoth Mountain in the last 10 years.

The all-time record for the most snow at Mammoth Mountain was in the 2010/11 Season with 668 inches. The mountain does expect to break that record in the coming weeks.

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Meanwhile water levels in the reservoirs are rising fast.

Winter storms across California have significantly improved drought conditions and filled state reservoirs that had held less than a third of their capacity.

Drone photos from the California Department of Water Resources show just how big a difference a recent series of storms, brought on by 11 major winter storms has made.

The image below shows Lake Oroville in Butte County, California’s second-biggest reservoir. The first image was taken Dec. 21. The second image was taken Jan. 12, after several storms had begun to refill the reservoir. The last image was taken March 8 and shows a dramatic improvement in the water level.

In the first image, the lake was at just 29% of its capacity. In the second image, the level had jumped to 51%. And by the third photo, the figure was up to 75%.

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As of Tuesday, Folsom Lake was at 63% of its capacity, in line with the historical average level.

The winter storms have eased drought conditions across the state and prompted authorities to lift mandatory water restrictions for millions of Southern California residents.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Precipitation total forecasts to May 1:

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The trend since 1890 for winter precipitation is just -0.01 inch per decade with ups and downs.

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Originally published in Master Resource.

We are in the midst of history’s greatest wealth transfer. Government subsidized support for wind systems, solar arrays, and electric vehicles overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy members of society and rich nations. The poor and middle class pay for green energy programs with higher taxes and higher electricity and energy costs. Developing nations suffer environmental damage to deliver mined materials needed for renewables in rich nations.

Since 2000, the world has spent more than $5 trillion on green energy. More than 300,000 wind turbines have been erected, millions of solar arrays were installed, more than 25 million electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest were cut down to produce biomass fuel, and about three percent of agricultural land is now used to produce biofuel for vehicles. The world spends about $1 trillion per year on green energy. Government subsidies run about $200 billion annually, with more than $1 trillion in subsidies spent over the last 20 years.

World leaders obsess over the need for a renewable energy transition to save the planet from human-caused global warming. Governments deliver an endless river of cash to promote adoption of green energy. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided $370 billion in subsidies and loans for renewables and EVs. But renewable subsidies and mandates overwhelmingly favor the rich members of society at the expense of the poor.

Wind systems receive production tax credits, property tax exemptions, and sometimes receive payments even when not generating electricity. Landowners receive as much as $8,000 per turbine each year from leases for wind systems on their land. Lease income can be quite high for a landowner with many turbines. In England, ordinary taxpayers pay hundreds of millions of pounds per year in taxes that are funneled as subsidies to wind companies and wealthy land owners.

In the US, 39 states currently have net metering laws. Net metering provides a credit for electricity generated by rooftop solar systems that is fed back into the grid. Solar generators typically get credits at the retail electricity rate, about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour. This is a subsidized rate, which is more than double the roughly five cents per kilowatt-hour earned by power plants. Apartment residents and homeowners that cannot afford to install rooftop solar pay higher electricity bills to subsidize homes that receive net metering credits. Rooftop solar owners also receive federal and state tax incentives, another wealth transfer from ordinary citizens.

US federal subsidies of up to $7,500 for each electric car purchased, along additional state subsidies, directly benefit EV buyers. The average price of an EV in the US last year was $66,000, which is out of reach for most drivers. A 2021 University of Chicago study found that California EV owners only drive 5,300 miles per year, less than half the mileage for a typical car. Most electric cars in the US are second cars for the rich.

A mid-size electric car needs a battery that weighs about a 1,000 pounds to provide acceptable driving range. Because of battery weight, EVs tend to be about 50 percent heavier than gasoline cars, which causes increased road damage. But EVs don’t pay the road tax included in the price of every gallon of gasoline. EVs should pay higher road taxes than traditional cars, but today this cost is borne by everyday gasoline car drivers.

Renewable systems require huge amounts of special metals. Electric car batteries need cobalt, nickel, and lithium to achieve high energy density and performance. Magnets in wind turbines require rare earth metals, such as neodymium and dysprosium. Large quantities of copper are essential for EV engines, batteries, wind and solar arrays, and electricity transmission systems to connect to remote wind and solar sites. According to the International Energy Agency, an EV requires about six times the special metals of a gasoline or diesel car. A wind array requires more than ten times the metals of a natural gas power plant on a delivered-electricity basis. The majority of these metals are mined in developing countries.

Almost 70 percent of cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Indonesia produces more than 30 percent of the world’s nickel. Chile produces 28 percent of the copper. China produces 60 percent of the rare earth metals. These nations struggle with serious air and water pollution from mining operations. Workers in mines also suffer from poor working conditions and the use of forced labor and child labor practices. But apparently no cost is too great so that rich people in developed nations can drive a Tesla.

To top it off, the European Union recently approved a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The CBAM will tax goods coming from poor nations which aren’t manufactured using low-carbon processes. CBAM revenues will be a great source of funds for Europe’s green energy programs that benefit the wealthy.

In January, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Washington proposed a wealth tax on billionaires. It’s interesting to note that all seven of these states mandate and heavily subsidize wind and solar arrays and electric vehicles, which transfer wealth from poor and middle-class residents to those same billionaires.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and author of the book Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development.

Since 2016, when acoustic sonar surveys required for construction of 1,500 wind turbines began on the U.S. Atlantic coast, 174 Humpback whales have washed ashore dead. This represents a 400 percent increase in mortalities from previous years. And then there are the highly endangered North Atlantic right whales, of which less than 400 individuals exist today. They recovered somewhat after being hunted to near extinction in the 1930’s, but now they are thought to be declining.

Federal government agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are authorizing the sonar surveys. Greenpeace, the organization I helped found in 1971, has sided with the wind turbines over the whales, stating there is no “proof” that sonar is involved in this tragedy. Here is a quote from a Greenpeace spokesperson:

“At this time, due to the lack of evidence suggesting harm from offshore wind development, Greenpeace’s position remains that the best way to protect whales is to create ocean sanctuaries, eliminate single-use plastics at the source, and stop our dependency on oil and gas.”

Perhaps it would be a good idea to put the “ocean sanctuaries” where the whales live.

It is a fact that mortalities among whales in this region are often caused by entanglement in fishnets and by vessel strikes. But a 400 percent increase in whale deaths, coincident with the sonar program, should cause environmentalists like Greenpeace to swing into action and spend some of their hundreds of millions on a thorough research program. Instead, they are doing nothing. Well, they do cruise around in their $30 million yacht which they call a “sailing vessel” even though there is an 1,850-horsepower diesel engine in the hold which provides the main propulsion.

It is understandable that federal agencies like NOAA would downplay the concern for the whales. The Biden administration is dead set on building all these contraptions even though they will be much more expensive and far less reliable than nuclear, hydroelectric, or fossil fuel generators.

Whales are acoustic species that use sonar to see the world around them. They have eyes for close-up recognition, but their sonar is how they navigate and speak to each other.

It is not only the sonar surveys that may pose a real problem for the whales. Depending on their size, each one of the 1,500 turbines will require a concrete base excavated into the ocean sediment up to 150 feet deep and 30-40 feet wide. This will clearly cause a huge amount of mud to be dispersed into the water column. Both these species of whales are of the baleen type. They are filter-feeders using their baleen to strain their food into their stomachs. The mud from these many excavations may interfere with their feeding and may also affect the species they depend on for food.

I sailed variously as navigator, first-mate and leader on all four Greenpeace campaigns to save the whales from 1975-1978. We went into the deep-sea Pacific for months at a time during the whaling season, sometimes 1,000 miles from land. We put ourselves in front of harpoons to protect the fleeing whales. When we arrived in San Francisco in early July 1975 with film footage of a harpoon going over the heads of our crew members in a small inflatable boat, and then into a Sperm Whale’s back, the images went around the world in a matter of hours. Greenpeace had arrived as a major player in the global ‘environmental movement’.

At the time we intervened in the Pacific whale slaughter, the Russian and Japanese whaling fleets together were killing about 30,000 whales annually. Many species - including blue whales, sei whales, fin whales and right whales - had been slaughtered to commercial extinction. Among the most commercially valuable whales, only the sperm whales, the largest toothed animals ever to exist on Earth, survived in large numbers. But they were certain to be all but wiped out if the hunts continued. The much smaller minke whales, which were never considered optimum by the big fleets, are still present in reasonable numbers

In 1979, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned the hunting of all species - except minke whales - by factory ships and declared the Indian Ocean a whale sanctuary. In 1982, the IWC adopted an indefinite global moratorium on all commercial whaling. Except for the right whales of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, all whale species are either fully recovered or well along in recovery.

I left Greenpeace when they began to refer to humans as “the enemies of the Earth,” a bit too much like “original sin” for me. To top it off, my fellow directors, none of whom had any formal science education, decided we should campaign to “ban chlorine worldwide.” They nicknamed chlorine “The Devil’s Element,” conveniently dismissing that chlorine is the most important of all the 90-plus naturally occurring elements for public health and medicine. I guess this doesn’t count for those who don’t like humankind.

Today, Greenpeace executives work in cushy offices and sail around like a bunch of college kids on a summer cruise. By siding with machines over living, endangered whales they have betrayed their founders and everyone who really cares about the natural world. Now more than ever, I am glad I left them behind in 1986, after 15 years of service. When it had its priorities right, Greenpeace was made up of voluntary crusaders for peace and nature. It has become a big business focused on fundraising, a backroom racket peddling junk science.

This commentary was first published at Washington Times, February 14, 2023, and can be accessed here.

Patrick Moore, Ph.D., ecology, is a co-founder of Greenpeace and was a director of Greenpeace from 1971 - 1986. He is a director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia, and author of several books, including “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom,” which debunks scare stories used to instill fear.

For more than three weeks, California has been pummeled by a series of storms arriving one after another from the Pacific Ocean. Torrential rains, mudslides, power outages, and floods plague state residents from north of San Francisco down to Los Angeles, 400 miles to the south. Scientists attribute this event to an “atmospheric river” condition in the Pacific Ocean. Many also claim that this phenomenon is due to human-caused climate change.

Following days of rain, floodwaters surround homes and vehicles in the Planada community of Merced County, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023.

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According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an atmospheric river is a long, narrow region in the atmosphere that can transport large amounts of water vapor, roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River. When atmospheric rivers make landfall, they release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow. An atmospheric river that forms in the tropics near Hawaii, sometimes called the Pineapple Express, can deliver large amounts of water to the U.S. West Coast.

This winter’s atmospheric river has been catastrophic. Ten different storms have stuck the California coast in the last three weeks. More than 20 people have died, thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes, and 25 million people are under a flood watch. The state averaged more than 11 inches of rain from late December to mid-January. The series of flooding storms were unexpected, following several years of severe drought in California.

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Government leaders and some scientists blame human carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. In commenting on the flood damage, Gov. Gavin Newsom said California was “proof that the climate crisis was real and that we have to take it seriously.” When touring damaged areas last week, President Joe Biden stated, “If anybody doubts the climate is changing, they must have been asleep for the past couple of years.”

But this has happened before. Geologic evidence shows that massive floods occur in California every century or two. A historic cataclysmic event was the great flood of the winter of 1861-1862. During December and January of that winter, a series of massive storms slammed, one after another, into the west coast of the state. This occurred after two decades of drought during 1840-1860. The event would also be called an atmospheric river by today’s scientists.

During the great flood of 1861-1862, a train of storms dumped record amounts of rain on California. Sixty-six inches of rain fell on Los Angeles, more than four times the yearly average. In early January, the capital city of Sacramento was submerged under ten feet of water. Gov. Leland Stanford moved the legislature to San Francisco on Jan. 22 to wait for the floods to subside. Sacramento remained flooded for months.

William Brewer toured California’s Central Valley at the end of January 1862 by boat. He wrote that the entire valley was a lake from the mountains in the east to the coast range hills on the west up to the tops of the 20-foot-high telegraph poles. One-quarter of the state’s estimated 800,000 cattle drowned during the flood.

Of course, the 1861-1862 event could not have been caused by to human-made global warming. There were no coal-fired power plants or Sport Utility Vehicles and only a few wood- or coal-burning locomotives. Most transportation was by horse and horse-drawn wagon. World carbon dioxide emissions at that time were less than a million times smaller than today’s emissions from industry. The flood of 1861-1862 demonstrated the power of natural weather events in Earth’s chaotic climate.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary provides one definition of superstition as “a false conception of causation.” The current California atmospheric river event is very similar to the 1861-1862 occurrence, which could not have been caused by human emissions. There is no evidence that the current atmospheric river event is caused by human emissions either, but those afraid of human-caused climate change are claiming that this is the case.

It’s remarkable that so many intelligent people profess that the current California disaster is due to human-caused climate change. University professors, government officials, and the news media are among the believers. They seem to call every noteworthy weather event “extreme.” They may also tell you that if we all drive electric cars and build wind turbines everywhere, we can eliminate atmospheric river events. This can best be described as modern superstition, on the level of past beliefs that witches caused crop failures.

Instead, Californians must adapt to weather, as they have throughout history.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on the environment, business, and public policy and author of the book Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development.