The good news at the end of a year otherwise filled with less than inspiring events is that the snow pack across the West has improved dramatically in the month of December.

If you have been following my blog for a long time, you might have noticed my obsession with snow pack. Snow pack is the amount of snow that is building up in the mountains. In essence, it is a vast natural reservoir that the entire West depends on for water well into the summer. The amount of snow that falls in Colorado directly influences whether or not Arizona and southern California have water restrictions later in the year. Westerners tend to fixate on snow pack.

Things were looking grim at the beginning of December, with nearly record low levels of snow. And then came the storms that brought feet of snow and inches of rain to the West.

These maps don’t include the rain that has been falling along the Pacific Coast and California. And you have to remember that the storms essentially stopped at the mountains, at least in Colorado and Wyoming, leaving the plains parched. But it looks like we’ll end the calendar year with decent amounts of snow pack.