© Andy Cross, The Denver PostA skier skis just below the Pallavicini Cornice at the Arapahoe Basin Ski Area March 19.
This past March will go down in the record books for Arapahoe Basin Ski Area, Breckenridge Ski Resort, Copper Mountain Resort and Keystone Resort, which all received more March snowfall than ever before.
At Breckenridge, spokeswoman Sara Lococo said March's 111 total inches surpassed the previous high of 98 inches that Breckenridge received in March 2001.
That's 13.3 percent more snow than March 2001. The 111 inches also makes March 2019 the third snowiest month on record at Breckenridge and the snowiest month outside of a pair of Januarys. The highest monthly snowfall total on record for the resort was 120 inches in January 2014, followed by 112 inches in January 1996.
At Copper Mountain, spokeswoman Taylor Prather said March 2019's 98 inches of snow was just about
14 percent more snowfall than Copper's previous March high, the 86 inches the resort received in March 2001. This past month also ranks as the fourth snowiest month on record since the resort opened in 1972. It's also the second snowiest month of this past decade.
At Keystone, March's 94 inches of snow was just under
19 percent more snow than the previous record March: March 2011's 79 inches of snow. March 2019 comes in as the third snowiest month on record at Keystone, only behind the 128 inches received in December 1983 and the 127 inches that fell in January 1996.
Comment: Incredible snow amounts have also been recorded across the
Sierra Nevada this year. Some ski resorts have received 550 to 600+ inches (14 to 15 m) of snow so far.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack is well above normal, at 162 percent of average. Chris Orrock, with the California Department of Water Resources, explained that the amount of snowpack this year is significant.
"If all the snow in the field we are standing in right now melted right now," he
said, "we would be standing in 51 inches of water." He says this is the
fourth largest amount of snow in recorded history.
Comment: In February this year another powerful storm lashed Rio de Janeiro killing at least five people.
Extreme rainfall events are increasingly affecting countries all over the world. These articles are a small selection we have published during the past month: