Allhands - Why phoenix needs snow, not rain

Only in Phoenix do we stand in the cold and rejoice over ... what rain we did get. We love the rain. Because rain brings water. And water brings life to the desert. Without it, we die. Which is true, except ... not all water is the same. Especially when it comes to our drinking water. What we really want is snow. Heavy, deep snow in places far away from Phoenix. Because snow melts slowly in the spring, orderly moving water from the Rockies, the White Mountains and the San Francisco Peaks to the lakes and reservoirs that store most of the state's water. Heavy snow is better than heavy rain because we don't lose as much of that to runoff or evaporation once the water is safely stored in our lakes. But here's the problem. Nobody's got any snow. This winter is on track to be one of the driest on record. And that's bad. Because Lake Mead especially doesn't have much of a buffer before it hits shortage levels. If a shortage is declared, sure, our taps in Phoenix would still flow. But Pinal County agriculture would be decimated. Which would wreck its economy and and provide the kind of headlines about water that no business thinking about moving here would want to see. So, yes. Be glad for the rain we ... once ... got. That's now going away. But hope it brings even more snow farther away. We need it for a lot more than skiing.