{"id":115730,"date":"2026-01-28T23:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T23:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115730\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T23:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T23:43:09","slug":"ask-dr-universe-queens-gazette-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115730\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Dr. Universe – Queens Gazette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Dr. Universe: Where Does All The Snow Go After Winter? \u2013 Bobo, 7, Washington state<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dear Bobo,<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing more magical than sparkly flakes gently falling on a fluffy blanket of snow. But it\u2019s a temporary kind of magic. When it warms up, the snow disappears. I asked my friend Jennifer Adam what\u2019s going on. She\u2019s a water scientist at Washington State University.<\/p>\n

She told me snow is frozen water. When temperatures rise, it melts. The solid frozen water turns back into liquid water. That melted-snow water works just like rain water. It soaks into the ground. It fills up the spaces between bits of underground soil and rock. That\u2019s the water that plants slurp up with their roots. \u201cBut the soil can only hold so much water,\u201d Adam said. \u201cIf you think of a sponge under the faucet, it fills, fills, fills, fills. At some point, it\u2019s going to overflow the top.\u201d Once the ground is full of water, any extra water just flows over the ground. Some of it drains into streams and rivers. Eventually, it makes its way to the ocean.<\/p>\n

Some of the water evaporates. It changes from liquid into gas. That water vapor hangs out in the atmosphere. Someday it will return to the Earth as rain or snow. Adam told me that snow and how it melts is super important in Washington state\u2014especially the snow held high up in the mountains. It\u2019s called snowpack.<\/p>\n

All winter, that snowpack piles up. It\u2019s like a frozen water storage system. As temperatures warm in the spring, the snowpack slowly melts. The water runs down. It fills the ground and flows into rivers and streams. That\u2019s important because Washington has a timing mismatch. We get most of our precipitation in winter. But we use most of our water in the summer. A generous snowpack stores lots of water and then slowly releases it, so the ground and rivers fill up slowly. That\u2019s the water farmers use to irrigate crops and grow food. It also turns turbines in dams on rivers to make our electricity.<\/p>\n

Scientists aren\u2019t sure what\u2019s going to happen with our water supply in Washington as the planet warms. We might get more precipitation or less precipitation. But we do know that it\u2019ll get warmer. That means our wet winters might bring more rain instead of snow. Without a healthy snowpack, water might rush into our rivers in winter, when we don\u2019t need it as much. It might be gone by summer, when we really do. That\u2019s why experts like Adam study the local water system closely. By carefully monitoring snowpack and changes in our environment, they can plan how to manage our water.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about tracking data to know how to adapt to a changing world.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Dr. Universe<\/p>\n

Ask Dr. Universe is a science-education project from Washington State University. Visit AskDrUniverse.wsu.edu to read more Q&A\u2019s, or to send in a science question of your own \u2013 or that of a kid you know \u2013 for a chance to be featured in a future Q&A. Or you can write to: Ask Dr. Universe Washington State University ITB 2013B Pullman, WA 99164<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mount Rainier in August. There\u2019s still snowpack remaining\u2014but lots of water has melted and filled up the ground and streams.\u00a0 Samuel Kerr CC BY-SA 3.0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Universe: Where Does All The Snow Go After Winter? \u2013 Bobo, 7, Washington state \u00a0 Dear Bobo,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-115730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}