Snow pack (snow water equivalent) remains historically low – the bottom of the data set. I’ve zoomed in on a time-series graph showing the maxium, median, minimum of the existing data, and our current year. Over the last couple of weeks the gap between the previous minimum snow pack levels and our current snow pack has widened.
We’ve been historically low since January 12th and I don’t see us getting back above that in the next two weeks.
SNOTEL data began in the late 70s and really increased from a data quality perspective in terms of number of locations during the 80s. Before that snow pack was measured manually. If you’re interested in reading about that, Water Education Colorado has a really good article about how it started and some of the history.
With the lack of snow pack, the drought continues to deepen over parts of Colorado’s high country with the deepest drought centered over the central and northern mountains from Vail and Copper Mountain south to Leadville and from Glenwood Springs through the Roaring Fork to Aspen. The best conditions in the state from a drought perspective is the southeast quarter of Colorado.
Why is the southern mountains drought situation different? There was a significant heavy precipitation event during the fall that impacted the long-term water budget and agricultural water situation in a significant way during early October. The remnants of a tropical storm flooded Pagosa Springs on the San Juan River, but dropped enough water for reservoir storage and vegetation health that we’re only in abnormally dry and very low-end drought conditions.
