Posts by awheaton

The specter of drought hanging over the Southwest is already pretty dire, with forests drying out into beetle-killed tinderboxes and reservoir levels plunging. But the current dry spell may barely register in comparison with what has happened in the distant past and could happen in the near future, according to research released this month. Brian Maffly of the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

A team of researchers used Juniper tree rings to chart the longest climate history in northern Utah to date, going back 1,200 years to map the wet periods and the droughts experienced by the headwaters of the Bear River.  Amy Joi O’Donoghue, Deseret News reports.

photo by Jennifer Pemberton, Utah Public Radio

Local researchers are using the history of a hardy native tree to build a vision of Utah’s drought future. Ogden Standard Examiner’s Leia Larsen reports. 

During the past 500 years, nine droughts in the American West dwarfed the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, reports a new study, while extremely wet years flooded much of the Wasatch Front, the region where 80 percent of Utah’s population now lives. See full story on news.discovery.com

KSL reports: Northern Utah tree rings chart droughts going back to Columbus