Apr 2020 Southwest Climate Podcast - The Wet & Wildflowery Winter-into-Spring Edition, plus COVID & Climate, Streamflow, Reservoirs, Wildfire, and Sum...

We hope that our climate/weather punditry can serve as a short break from concerns about the Covid19/coronavirus outbreak. We plan to continue producing this podcast remotely for the foreseeable future, and this podcast was recorded over Zoom. The sound quality might be a little different (or maybe you won't even notice), but we want to keep making the podcast during the stay-at/work-from-home order. We enjoy these discussions and hope you do too.  -Ben, Mike, and Zack In the April 2020 edition of the CLIMAS Southwest Climate Podcast, Mike Crimmins and Zack Guido bring you the latest news and commentary about climate in the Southwest. First, they have a conversation about the links between COVID-19 and climate, and the challenges of research during a fast-moving event (You can skip to the 15:00 mark if you want to move straight to their discussion of southwestern climate). For the rest of the podcast, they move through an overview of events from winter and early spring - including just how wet and wildflower-y it has been. This leads to a discussion of wildfire, the timing and quality of current ENSO forecasts, and just a bit of optimism looking towards the monsoon. Discussed in this Episode: Potential Effects of Seasonal and Temperature Changes on Spread of COVID-19 Examined in New Rapid Response to Government from Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases - https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2020/04/potential-effects-of-seasonal-and-temperature-changes-on-spread-of-covid-19-examined-in-new-rapid-response-to-government-from-standing-committee-on-emerging-infectious-diseases