Hey there, Colorado, and welcome to another edition of The Temperature, where today my colleague has linked to a story below about whether the zombie apocalypse is coming — for deer, though there is the potential for some spillover into humans. Yikes.
If you’re anything like me, these mornings between the winter solstice and early January feel like purgatory. Yes, the days have begun to get longer. The sunrises, though, are still getting later, meaning that mornings are darker. But, for those living in Denver, that changed yesterday when sunrise times finally started moving earlier. Nothing but blue skies ahead! (Except for the major arctic storm system about to sweep through the state.)
Hang in there, folks on the Western Slope. Your earlier sunrises should begin later this week. (Fun fact: Did you know that it takes a little less than a half hour for the sun to rise across all of Colorado? The sunrise time this morning in Burlington was 26 minutes earlier than the time in Fruita.)
OK, enough with the heliolatry. Time for some news.
Reporter
TEMP CHECK
HEALTH
Has Colorado’s COVID season peaked or are we in for another round?
As it seems like everyone you know is sniffling or coughing or otherwise testing positive for something, here is what we know about the state’s current COVID trends:
The curious thing is, we’ve been here before. Last year saw almost the exact same scenario: Colorado’s cases peaked in late November, earlier than the rest of the nation. Then a new variant emerged that drove cases higher nationally, and it was uncertain if Colorado would be twice bitten.
Last year, when the variant in question was XBB.1.5, there was almost no impact. The year before that was when the omicron variant lineage first emerged, and Colorado saw a huge January infection rebound. This year appears like it might fall somewhere in between.
Dr. Rachel Herlihy, the state epidemiologist at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said JN.1 “is probably explaining why we’re seeing an increase now — this new variant that scientists believe has different characteristics, probably more transmissible, perhaps more immune breakthrough.”
Now, here’s what’s fascinating about the timing of our peak (at least so far) for the season. This is our fourth pandemic winter in Colorado — which means it’s the fourth time we’ve gone through the traditional respiratory virus season with COVID in the mix. In each of those four years, Colorado saw a COVID peak sometime around the last week of November, give or take a week.
Yes, respiratory viruses tend to rise and fall over winter. But this is a much tighter timing for peaks than we see with, say, the flu, which sometimes hits early and sometimes later in winter. It’s also interesting because, with holiday travel in late November and December, you would normally expect to see cases increasing as a result — that hasn’t always been the case in Colorado, especially absent the emergence of a significant new variant.
Viral infection patterns are determined by a complex stew of human behavior, temperature, humidity and any number of other factors we have yet to discover. So, even though we’ve lived with COVID for years now, there’s still so much we don’t know.
“It is an interesting pattern,” Herlihy said. “I don’t think we can fully explain it.”
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
MORE HEALTH NEWS
CLIMATE
More on Colorado’s alarming climate change update
A definitive climate change report for Colorado from researchers at CSU put solid numbers to what policy and advocacy leaders have been warning about as they seek to correct the state’s dangerous course. Colorado’s average temperature has warmed 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1980, and without serious curbs to greenhouse gases worldwide, another 1 to 4 degrees are on tap.
There were so many eye-opening charts, and so many detailed reactions, to the Colorado State University update that we’re extending our Monday story by a few comments and snapshots.
The map above cuts Colorado into regions and seasons. Climate change heating has been the most pronounced during Colorado’s fall months, more than 3 degrees so far in some areas. You can see southwestern and south-central Colorado are taking the biggest beatings from Mr. Sun. That pattern is expected to continue, boding ill for the Rio Grande River Basin already tapped out by overuse by agriculture and strict commitments to share water in interstate compacts.
Putting numbers to it, said Colorado GreenLatinos’ Ean Tafoya, is “confirming what we know — we must act quickly to dramatically reduce our CO2 emissions. If not, increased temperatures will have massive impacts on humans and biodiversity, will lead to intensified heat island effects in urban settings, and heat waves lead to crop loss and urban deaths. Let alone the huge impacts to outdoor workers from the temperatures and the increased formation of ozone,” Tafoya said, after seeing a copy of the report.
Some environmental advocates immediately called out Colorado’s oil and gas industry for both pumping more carbon out of the ground for burning, and setting loose too much leaking methane along the way.
The state’s major oil trade groups didn’t dispute the CSU warming report, but pointed to a series of industry changes and regulatory crackdowns that are reducing their contribution to Colorado greenhouse gas emissions.
“If anything, the release of this report further underscores the imperative to holistically address the global climate challenge,” said Kait Schwartz, director of American Petroleum Institute Colorado.
“Colorado’s natural gas and oil industry has spent a decade dramatically reducing emissions and is demonstrably on pace to meet the state’s science-based climate targets of 26% by 2025 and 50% by 2030, from 2005 levels,” Schwartz said.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
CLIMATE
Marshall fire was crazy because it was also a hurricane, NOAA says
We just had to take some space to publish a few more remarkable images and graphics from a new study of the weather surrounding the notorious Marshall fire at the end of 2021.
NOAA and National Weather Service researchers collaborated to meticulously map wind predictions and outcomes for that fateful day, and offer suggestions to improve warning systems for future Front Range wildland urban interface fires.
The full story is at ColoradoSun.com. The extra photos, starting above, are equally startling. Downslope storms create a wave and then a wall, as wind currents hit a rise near Louisville and send high speed air and debris shooting to the sky. The fire’s intense smoke made a regular wind occurrence suddenly visible.
Interestingly, though climate change is assumed to make unicorn storms like the one surrounding Marshall more frequent, the Boulder researchers said such intense downslope events have actually been slightly less frequent in recent years even as average temperatures rise. The chart below shows the annual number of high wind incidents lately.
Climate change did contribute to the devastation of the fire, though, in other measurable ways. While the spring of 2021 had been extra wet, growing underbrush fuel to dangerous levels, six months of desiccation in late 2021 left no snow cover and clumps of dying tinder.
This graphic shows the Denver area setting a record low for precipitation over those six months of 2021:
And finally, we just had to run this worth-a-thousand-words embers photo again. Family members of the NOAA researchers, many of whom live right in the Louisville and Superior communities most in danger, collected evidence of the flaming coals shot forth from the Marshall wind cannon, landing miles ahead of the burn.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
MORE CLIMATE NEWS
CHART OF THE WEEK
Where Colorado’s Medicaid money goes
Colorado’s legislative session is officially underway — and at least for the moment it appears that health care will not be among the most hotly debated issues this year. But health care is never far from lawmakers’ minds because it makes up such a massive chunk of the budget.
The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which administers Medicaid in the state, accounts for roughly one-third of Colorado’s entire budget. To better understand how that money gets spent, you can look to the presentation that HCPF leaders gave to the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee last month. The chart above, taken from the presentation, shows the various populations that compose Medicaid’s members and then shows how much each population accounts for in Medicaid’s budget.
Children, adolescents and adults who qualify under Medicaid expansion — which opens access to Medicaid for people earning slightly above the poverty line — make up 75% of the state’s Medicaid members. But they account for only 44% of the spending. This is important context in case the 2024 election year brings back talk of Medicaid eating the state budget.
Meanwhile, where does all that money spent by Medicaid in Colorado go? Mostly to hospitals, home- and community-based care and the pharmaceutical industry. Hospitals, alone, account for almost a quarter of the department’s spending.
You can see HCPF’s full presentation slide deck here, and if you’d like to really get into the weeds, you can see more detail from the department’s presentation in this briefing packet.
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
HEAT MAP
CLIMATE
HEALTH
Thanks for reading all the way to the end! We just couldn’t appreciate you more. May your homes stay warm and your brains remain free of pathogenic prions, and we’ll see you back here next week.
— John & Michael
Corrections & Clarifications
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