I am writing with regards to the San Juan Basin snow graph that The Durango Herald publishes daily in the winter. The line for snow-water equivalent for the 2012-2013 winter has been wrong all year. I have spoken with two employees of the Herald since January, but I guess correcting this isn’t a priority.
It appears to be the data for the 2010-2011 winter. Anyone can look at the snow-water equivalent data from SNOTEL snow telemetry sites at www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/. Click on SNOTEL Snow and Precipitation Update Report. If the graph was correct, you would see that the San Juan Basin has not seen a winter approaching the 30-year average since 2010-2011 and that the past five winters are all significantly below that average.
Additionally, since I began looking at SNOTEL data in the mid 1990s, the 30-year averages have been declining. Action Line can joke about being on “the wrong side of the bell curve” (Herald, March 21) but this trend may have consequences for the “Durango lifestyle.”
Tom Miller
Durango
Editor’s note: The Herald thanks reader Tom Miller for pointing out the error. The snow graph has been corrected.
