The West's spring runoff is older than you think

Salt Lake City UT (SPX) May 06, 2025

Growing communities and extensive agriculture throughout the Western United States rely on meltwater that spills out of snow-capped mountains every spring. The models for predicting the amount of this streamflow available each year have long assumed that a small fraction of snowmelt each year enters shallow soil, with the remainder rapidly exiting in rivers and creeks. New research from Un