The weather pattern across the USA this spring appears to be "vastly different than last March, and will translate to a more favorable growing season for agriculture" in many areas, according to a spring forecast released Wednesday by private forecasting company AccuWeather.

Congress isn’t planning to take action on climate change any time soon. But if the planet keeps warming, a number of states won’t be able to ignore the problem quite so easily. One good place to see this is in the Colorado River basin.

Long before the current drought or the continuing conversation about  global warming, before the Dust Bowl, the climate in large portions of the American West was far drier than modern humans have become accustomed to. The 19th and 20th centuries, ancient tree rings show, were a relative oasis of settlement-friendly weather.

Rising temperatures are projected to trigger more wildfires in most of North America and Europe, according to a new study, but climate change may have the opposite effect around the equator.

The giant concrete dams of the Pacific Northwest are overflowing with water. Wyoming has deployed National Guard troops to pile up sandbags.

For all the attention on epic flooding in the Mississippi Valley, a quiet threat has been growing here in the West where winter snows have piled up on mountain ranges throughout the region.

The winter and early spring have been extreme across the West, with record snowpacks bringing joy to skiers and urban water managers but severe flood risks to northern Utah, Wyoming and Montana. And despite all the wet weather in the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, parts of eastern Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona are in severe drought and gearing up for what is forecast as a bad fire season.