Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

April 8, 2026

Will inflows into Lake Powell will drop below those of 2002? You remember that year? A year of heat, drought and fire. An essay about changes and what precipitates them.

Just what we need in Colorado, an El Niño that could cause a hotter-than-average summer for the Western United States and other parts of the globe, continuing into 2027.

Risk of an El Ninõ has been rising, reported the Washington Post on Monday citing the work of a medium-range weather forecasting organization. This one could push global temperatures to record levels, particularly in 2027. “Real potential for the strongest El Ninõ event in 140 years,” wrote Paul Rondy, a professor of atmospheric science at the State University of New York at Albany.

This, explained the Post, could also yield milder winter temperatures in the United States.

We already know something about warm winters. November was the third warmest November on record in Colorado. December and February broke records, as Colorado state climatologist Russ Schumacher has reported.

Then came March and a records-busting string of days during the “heat dome.” Fort Collins went over 90, a threshold not achieved on average until June. These hottest and earliest thresholds were breached at locations across Colorado.

Across the Colorado River Basin, average daily temperatures during March were the warmest on record. This wreaked havoc on an already so-so or less snowpack.

“March was not … helpful,” consulting climate researcher Jeff Lukas observed drily in a LinkedIn post on Monday. “Record heat for the Upper Colorado River Basin and near-record-low precipitation in what should be one of the snowiest months. The basin-wide snowpack peaked at the earliest date and lowest level on record.”

In Colorado, the snowpack in the Eagle River drainage on April 1 was 21% of the 30-year average. The Roaring Fork River was 26%. On the Yampa it was 20%. On the San Juan, it was 17%. In all these cases and others, the snowpack had fallen by half or more compared to March 1.

Lake Powell, already shrunken to 24% to 25% of capacity, will almost assuredly show even more shoreline. As of Tuesday the reservoir level was down almost 31 feet from a year ago. The Colorado River Basin Forecasting Center on Tuesday predicted 22% of average flows into Powell. Rain and snow could still help, but at least in the next 10 days, they are unlikely.

Two benchmarks, 1977 and 2002, exist for awful-flow years on the Colorado River since Glen Canyon Dam was completed in the 1960s. In 2002, flows into Powell were shockingly low, about 25% of average. The decline after two so-so years was remarkable. Powell, however, had been 94% full to start the century.

Margins have narrowed. Becky Bolinger, a climate researcher in Colorado, pointed out Monday on LinkedIn that the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center currently projects flows April-through-July flows will be a little greater than 2002. “I think it is entirely plausible that the actual volume for 2026 comes in as a new record low,” she wrote.

See the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center slide deck here.

What will the Bureau of Reclamation do? It operates the big dams on the Colorado River, including Glen Canyon. Average releases from Glen Canyon Dam since 2000 have been 8.29 million acre-feet.

One Colorado hydrologist, once again writing on LinkedIn, speculated that the Bureau will reduce the releases from Powell to 6 million acre-feet and conceivably even lower. That would leave Powell above the minimum level needed to produce power, if barely. Power production from 2000 to 2023 declined 17%.

The value of clean power is great. It is part of the portfolio of nearly all electrical cooperatives in the region, including those in Colorado, as well as municipal providers. The greater value, say utility executives, is the ability of the dam’s hydro unit to restart the Western grid, if necessary. This is called a black start. Such a need is unlikely but huge if it were to occur. The giant amounts of battery storage, however, have reduced that importance in the last few years.

Those reduced flows from Powell, however, would likely annoy Arizona and California. The Colorado River Compact of 1922 split the water in the river system between the lower-basin states and Colorado and other upper-basin states. It put a figure on the division: 7.5 million acre-feet. (And more must flow from the upper basin for Mexico and to account for evaporation). In 1922, they thought there was plenty left for Mexico and more yet to flow into the Pacific Ocean. Wisely, in 1948, the upper basin states, in their compact amongst themselves, instead used a percentage.

In question is what exactly the 1922 compact says is the obligation of upper basin states? Must they allow all the water in the Eagle, Yampa and other headwaters rivers be allowed to flow downstream to deliver 7.5 million acre-feet? What if that much water isn’t there?

Colorado River Basin states have notoriously been at an impasse about how to share the shrinking river. The position of Colorado — and other upper-basin states — was pithily captured in a statement by Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s chief negotiator, “We’ve been asked to solve a problem we didn’t create with water we don’t have,” she has said.

“It’s plain: the precarious situation facing the Basin today was fueled by overuse in the Lower Basin,” wrote Nick Peters, the chief system planning and projects officer for Colorado Springs Utilities, in an op-ed published during March in Colorado Politics.

Peters argued against a short-term deal in response to the exigency of this year’s dramatic declines.

In late March, I saw Mitchell at an event in Fort Collins celebrating the 60^th anniversary of the Colorado Water Center. “I follow you to Lamar. I follow you to Grand Junction. I follow you to Silverthorne. I follow you here to get an interview,” I said jokingly.

“You can follow me tomorrow to Durango to the basin roundtable there if you want,” she answered with a smile.

We spoke about the Colorado River, but not on the record.

Two days later, I saw that she had traveled to southwest Colorado while I likely still slumbered. There, she delivered enough fire and brimstone to bring the attendees gathered at the roundtable in Ignacio to their feet in a standing ovation, according to the Durango Herald.

In Fort Collins, the Colorado Water Center dinner had been arranged around tables. I had signed up to be at Jennifer Gimbel’s table. As a director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, she had once represented Colorado in the Colorado River affairs. She is now senior policy scholar at the Water Institute.

“It’s my understanding they were hoping to get a deal for 20 to 30 years. Now they’re looking at five years,” she told me. “They really need to just look at this year.”

I asked her whether the negotiations have been as transparent as they should be. Some have said they are not. We can hear the talking points of Becky Mitchell and other negotiators, but we have not heard about their strategies.

Gimbel pointed me to the frequent appearances of Mitchell at the basin roundtables and other water forum. She’s constantly on the road.

Also relevant, she observed, was a paper that had been published several days previously on The Conservation by Karen Schlatter, director of the Colorado Water Center, and Sharon Megdal, of the University of Arizona. The paper is titled “Why Colorado River negotiations stalled, and why they could resume with the possibility of agreement.”

Schlatter and Megdal traced the trajectory of prior agreements on the Colorado River, pointing to the role of federal leadership in forging agreement.

“In this round of negotiations, federal leadership has been lagging,” they write. ”The Department of the Interior has not made clear what the consequences might be for the states if they fail to agree. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has been without a permanent commissioner since President Donald Trump retook office in January 2025. And federal staff have only recently begun helping to facilitate the discussions.”

They also say this: “We believe that agreement between the seven states is still possible. It may be less effective to bring in a third-party facilitator at this stage in the negotiation process, though, because of the degraded trust, hardened positions and shortage of time.”

Earlier in the evening, a film had been shown that extolled the work of the water center. Colorado State University produced Elwood Mead, after whom the reservoir along the Arizona-Nevada border is named, and others. The current staff of the water center includes Brad Udall, who has deep roots at many levels in the Colorado River Basin

Udall said something that captivated me, in part because it improved upon my own thoughts. I had been toying with an essay that laid out how Colorado during the roughly first 130 years of its existence had been all about putting water to beneficial use. And the last roughly 35 years had been most prominently about reconciling its past with the new limits. I was thinking in part of groundwater mining but also the fact that there really is no water to be had on the surface. There’s less. We’ve hit the wall and it is moving.

In Udall’s thesis — which I learned from him later he has delivered in several slide shows — the history of the Colorado River Basin can be seen in three phases. The 19^th century water law meets 20^th century infrastructure now colliding with 21^st century population and climate change.

And 2026 seems to be a seminal year in that journey. We already have had heat records tumbling left and right, with an El Nino likely to deliver more. We quite possibly will see a record for low inflow into Lake Powell, undercutting 2002.

I remember June 2002 quite well. On that month’s first Sunday I stood atop a mountain in Colorado and saw smoke from the Hayman Fire, which soon became the biggest fire in Colorado history (it’s now ranked 4^th) as well as fire from the Coal Seam Fire near Glenwood Springs. More came later. It was a smoky summer in Colorado.

A few weeks ago, I heard former Gov. Bill Ritter and Bryan Hannegan, the CEO of Holy Cross Energy, fret about the risk of wildfire. The drought, said Ritter, “puts us in a very, very difficult and delicate position.”

State officials, meanwhile, are gearing up to address Front Range forests vulnerable to bark beetles. And at the Public Utilities Commission, Chairman Eric Blank has been openly worrying about whether Colorado will have enough electricity this summer to meet demand if we have unusually hot weather.

Changes mostly occur in increments, but there are times that changes take giant steps. “This year is going to teach us a lot,” said Nathan Coombs, manager of the Conejos Water Conservancy District in the San Luis Valley, when I saw him in Fort Collins. The district depends upon water storage in Platoro Reservoir, located in the San Juan Mountains. The normal inflow into the reservoir in late March, he said, was 12 to 15 cubic feet per second. “This morning, it was 195, because of the heat melting the snow.”

Two days later, at a forum in Alamosa, Coombs, a fourth-generation farmer, further explained the predicament. These earlier flows must be allowed to proceed downstream. Only later in the year will the reservoir be allowed to retain water. But will there be any?

Maybe we will get giant rain and snowstorms yet this spring. In the next 10 days, the forecast is for both wetter and warmer than normal. And, as Coombs and others pointed out, big rainstorms last October left the soil saturated.

October, of course, should bring snow, not rain, to higher elevations. We are living in different times, mostly warmer. Then there’s that elevated risk of an El Niño and a much, much warmer summer ahead of us and the winter beyond that.

Click the link to read the article on the CU Boulder Today website (Lauren Lipuma and Yvaine Ye):

March 31. 2026

For the past weeks, temperatures in Colorado have surged 20 to 30 degrees above average for March, normally one of the state’s snowiest months. 

That’s on top of an unusually warm and dry winter for the American Southwest, a region already grappling with long-term water shortages since around 2000. In Colorado, snowpack sits at about 40% of normal levels, among the lowest since comprehensive modern records began roughly four decades ago.

In parts of the southern Colorado River Basin, a 250,000-square-mile watershed spanning seven states in the southwest, snowpack has dropped to less than one-third of normal. The basin provides water for 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland.

Snowpack acts like frozen water towers, said Ben Livneh, associate professor in the department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. As temperatures rise and the Southwest enters its typically hot and dry spring and summer months, melting snow provides about 80% of the water used by downstream communities in the Colorado River Basin. 

In response to the snow drought, Denver’s water authority recently declared a Stage 1 drought, the first drought alert the city has issued since the summer of 2013. Other Front Range cities are considering similar measures. 

“In Colorado, our peak snowpack happens around mid-April, so there is still a chance that we could get more snow,” said Livneh, who’s also the director of the Western Water Assessment (WWA) at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). According to the National Weather Service, a storm is bringing precipitation to Colorado this week, with the potential for a few inches of accumulation in the mountains. “But at this point, it does look like we have a long way to go to catch up.”

CU Boulder Today sat down with Livneh to talk about the impact of a snow drought on Colorado communities, whether drought is the new normal and what individuals can do. 

How dry is it?

Colorado lies in a mountainous region far from the ocean, so our climate naturally varies a lot. As a result, it’s not uncommon to see big swings between wet years and dry years.

Right now, we are in a very dry period, and the numbers are pretty stark. There’s barely any snow on mountains in lower elevations, and some snowpack could melt early because of the warm weather. When we look ahead to the amount of water expected to flow into our reservoirs, which would be the water people actually get to use, the current forecasts fall among the lowest we’ve seen since the early 1980s when the detailed snow measurements began.

How does this year compare with previous drought years?

There were some years that were drier, like 1977 and 1981. But those years weren’t as warm as this year. Over the past 40 years, since we’ve had continuous observation data, 2002 and 2012 were also warm with low precipitation, but they weren’t as dry as this year.

We have a lot of systems in place that were specifically designed to handle individual bad years, like these big, impressive reservoirs. But we’ve been in a dry period for the past 25 years, and every dry year puts additional stress on our infrastructure.

What could be causing this snow drought?

We’re currently in the warmest 25-year period on record, and warming is one of the clearest signals of recent climatic changes. When it’s warmer, the atmosphere can hold more moisture. 

At the same time, the climate in our region naturally swings between wetter and drier decades. It’s almost like a pendulum that shifts every 20 or 30 years.

What may be happening now is that those two things— climate change and natural fluctuations— are overlapping, creating something of a perfect storm for this year.

What is the WWA doing to help?

WWA is working to support decision makers to best manage their water, based on what is actually available, as well as what is forecasted in the Colorado River Basin. 

Much of our regional economy relies on water, from the ski industry to food growers and power generators. The stress from drought is widespread. 

Our region’s planning and treaties in the past were based on assumptions about historical conditions. Now we’re trying to figure out whether these dry conditions are a drought or perhaps closer to the long-term normal conditions. 

We are also trying to get a better sense of what mountain communities are experiencing and what types of information they need, because many of them rely on the snowpack and snow melt as their primary reservoir for water.

Should people be worried about water shortages right now?

This is really a large-scale phenomenon, so if anything, I would encourage people to get curious about the science and what we can say about the current conditions. Indoor water use doesn’t consume very much, and cities are not really at risk of running out of water. But people should be mindful not to waste water outdoors. Pay attention to city rules for outdoor water use, like when you can turn on your sprinklers and water your lawn.

Other than that, I encourage people to go outside. This is certainly a big departure from what we think Colorado winters should be like, but it also offers opportunities for people to bike to work more often, or spend more time outdoors doing things they might not otherwise be able to do.

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Public Radio website (Sam Brasch). Here’s an excerpt:

The old-school art of snow tracking

Metal signs mark the survey site in a patch of forest above the cabin. Once the team arrived, Mike Ardison, a hydrologic technician for the Colorado Snow Survey, unloaded a green trundle off his back, then unwrapped it to reveal sections of a hollow, aluminum tube. It extends to roughly eight feet long once he fits the pieces together…To measure the snow levels, Domonkos and Ardison work their way along the snow course, dropping the tube at a series of set points along the path. A column of snow captured inside reveals the height, then the pair hang the tube from a spring-powered milk scale to clock the weight. Digital scales might be more accurate, but Ardison said their batteries wouldn’t last long in normal winter temperatures…

Crouched over a notebook, [Brian] Domonkos punched a calculator to arrive at a figure for the site. He let out a sigh when he arrived at the final number: 2.2 inches of snow-water equivalent, less than half the previous record low measured on the same date in 1977…Other measurements taken at snow courses around April 1 were just as alarming. Out of the 64 sites in Colorado with at least 50 years of data, 60 reported either record-low snow levels or tied the lowest on record…Those results confirm 2026 as the worst year for Colorado snowpack in recorded history, said Russ Schumacher, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and Colorado’s state climatologist. A lack of historical precedent means it’s harder to fully predict the impact of such low water levels. Schumacher, however, expects reservoir levels to rapidly decline in the summer and fall. Fire risk is harder to predict, but he said major wildfires usually appear in years when the snowpack is lower and melts early. 

“We’re maybe in one of these liminal spaces where you can see what’s coming, but it’s not here yet,” Schumacher said. “And, yeah, that’s a challenging situation.” 

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Climate Center website (Russ Schumacher):

April 2, 2026

We’ve reached April 1, which is a key date in assessing where things stand with snow in the mountains, which then informs the likely water supply in streams and rivers later in the spring and summer. The peak in snowpack actually tends to arrive a bit later than April 1 at higher elevations and the northern part of the state, but April 1 is when manual snow course measurements have historically been made, so it serves as a useful point of long-term comparison. There’s no sugar-coating the data right now: after the record-smashing heat in March, the mountain snowpack is in historically bad shape for April 1.

First, a few updates on the March heat

As of our last blog post about the March heat wave, the statewide March temperature record had been tied, but not broken. It only took a couple more days for that to happen. The previous March record of 96°F from Holly in 1907 was broken with highs of 99°F at Burlington on the 25th and at Campo on the 26th. (Temperatures at Springfield and Walsh also exceeded the previous March record, reaching 98 and 97 respectively.)

Here’s one more way to look at how extreme and prolonged the heat was in March. This map shows that broad swaths of Colorado had more than 7 days with high temperatures warmer than any March temperature from 1951-2025. That’s right: a whole week’s worth of days that were warmer than any March day in the last 75 years. On the Eastern Plains, it was “only” 2-5 days warmer than previous March records. The one exception in this dataset is the highest elevations in the mountains. There’s not a lot of reliable temperature data up above treeline, so we’re not sure whether this is correct or not.

We’ll round up more of the records in our monthly summary that will go out next week. (If you’re subscribed to get these posts via email, you’ll get those summaries too. If you aren’t subscribed, the sign-up box is at the bottom of the page!) But there’s no question that this will go down as the warmest March on record for Colorado—around 3-4°F warmer than any other March in the last 132 years—once all the numbers are tallied.

We wish the snowpack numbers were an April fool’s joke

If you’ve read anything about the mountain snowpack this year, you might be sick of seeing this graph. But it’s worth another close look because of how incredible it is, and not in a good way.

As of April 1, the snow water equivalent (the amount of liquid water stored in the snow) averaged across the 115 SNOTEL stations in Colorado was 3.3 inches, just 22% of the 30-year median. The previous low in the SNOTEL era (back to 1987) on April 1 was in 2012, which had 9.1″ on April 1. That means that we currently have less than 40% of the water in the snow than the previous lowest year.

Amid the record-shattering heat in the 2nd half of March, statewide snowpack declined by nearly 5 inches. Previously, the fastest decline in a 2-week period before April 1 was 2.3″ in 2012, one of the worst years for spring snowpack. Only two times has the SWE dropped by more than 5″ in two weeks before the end of April, in 1987 and 1989 which were both years with above-average peaks that started melting on the early side.

The peak SWE this year, again averaged across the SNOTEL stations in Colorado, was 8.55″ on March 9. That peak is just 51% of the median peak, nearly a month earlier than average, and is the lowest peak of the SNOTEL era.

As discussed in previous posts, the other key points of comparison for past snow droughts were 1977 and 1981, when SNOTEL stations either didn’t yet exist (1977) or were not as widely distributed as they are now (1981). In some of the southern mountain ranges, the peak SWE in early March this year may have been slightly higher than it was in those years. But in both of those years—like nearly every other year—the SWE increased substantially between March 1 and April 1. We know that’s not what happened this year. This year’s April 1 SWE was lower than those years almost everywhere in the state. It’s now safe to conclude that this has been the worst year for Colorado snowpack in recorded history.

Many of the April 1 snow course measurements are now in, and at 60 of the 64 sites with at least 50 years of data, the SWE in 2026 was the lowest or tied for the lowest on record.

Perhaps more shocking is how much less SWE there was than in any previous years. The map below shows the percent of the previous record low at sites with more than 50 years of data. Most locations have less than half of the previous record low, and several locations that have never before had less than 5 or 6 inches of SWE on April 1 have no snow on the ground this year. Eighteen of the 64 snow course sites observed zero SWE this year and had never previously been snow-free on April 1st.

The long-term measurement site at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic estimated that the spring snowpack in parts of the Gunnison Basin was unprecedented, with a return period of hundreds of years. The Colorado Dust on Snow program (CODOS) has numerous photos of the poor snowpack on their blog.

Drought conditions and what to expect in April

Now, it’s important to remember that not all of the water that was in the snow earlier in the winter has disappeared (though some of it did, to sublimation). That water is going into the soils and the rivers now. The rivers will therefore also be peaking very early: rivers that typically have peak flow in late May or early June will likely peak sometime in April. This means extremely low flows in summer are likely, unless there’s an unusually wet late spring.

This week’s US Drought Monitor summarizes the effects of the recent conditions across Colorado. Almost the entire northwestern quarter of the state is now in D4 (exceptional) drought, going back to a dry spring and summer in 2025 and a terrible winter and early spring this year. The D4 coverage of 21.59% is the largest since February 2021.

The one bit of good news is that April has started off like April, rather than whatever the March-June hybrid was that we just went through. Widespread precipitation fell in western Colorado, with snow in the mountains and rain at lower elevations. Some locations in southwestern Colorado that had zero precipitation in March, received well over an inch of precipitation between Tuesday and Wednesday. (Note that the Drought Monitor map shown above only includes data through early Tuesday morning, so the recent storm is not reflected.) Some of the mountain SNOTEL sites that had gone snow-free at the end of March have snow on the ground again!

This storm didn’t come anywhere near alleviating the snowpack and water deficits that have arisen in the last few months. But any water from the sky is very welcome at this point! The outlook for the rest of the month does appear to be April-like as well: probably warmer than average, but with more active weather than March had. This should help to slow down the melting of the little snow that remains, and perhaps give some temporary increases in snowpack that at the very least keep the situation from degrading as quickly as it has been.

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

This U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) week saw extensive degradations across areas of the West, Plains, South, and Southeast. Out West, widespread degradations were centered across the Intermountain West, including Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming, and to a lesser extent across portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Montana. Continued degradations are expected in the coming weeks and months due to anomalous heat and record-low snowpack levels. In the Plains, drought expanded and intensified from Oklahoma to South Dakota. In the South and Southeast, dry conditions persisted this week, adding to significant longer-term (9- to 12+ month) precipitation deficits (ranging from 8 to 20+ inches), with the most severe drought conditions centered over portions of Texas, Arkansas, Georgia, and Florida. In the Northeast and Midwest, light-to-moderate rainfall (1 to 3 inches) during the past week led to targeted improvements in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

At the end of March, mountain snowpack conditions remain well below normal for the time of year, with record to near-record low levels observed across all western states. Additionally, many Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) SNOw TELemetry (SNOTEL) network monitoring stations are reporting very shallow snow depths or no snow on the ground. Region-level (2-digit HUC) snow water equivalent (SWE) values (percent of median) are as follows: Pacific Northwest 55%, Missouri 56%, Upper Colorado 24%, Great Basin 18%, Lower Colorado 14%, Rio Grande 8%, and Arkansas-White-Red 8%. In California, statewide snowpack is 18% of normal (April 1), with the Southern Sierra at 32%, Central Sierra at 21%, and Northern Sierra at 6%. Despite poor snowpack conditions, California’s reservoirs remain at or above historical averages for the date (March 31), with Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville at 113% and 123% of average, respectively. In the Southwest, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (March 29) reports critically low levels at Lake Powell (24% full; 41% of average for the date) and Lake Mead (33% full; 52% of average for the date), with the total Colorado River system at 36% of capacity (compared to 41% at the same time last year)…

High Plains

On this week’s map, widespread changes were made across the region in response to below-normal precipitation (time scales from 1 to 6 months), declining soil moisture, scattered low streamflows, elevated evapotranspiration rates, and associated anomalously warm temperatures—not only in recent weeks, but moving through the entire cool season. In South Dakota, record to near-record low streamflows have been observed during the last 120-day period as well as below-normal soil moisture levels observed at the South Dakota Mesonet monitoring stations. Additionally, the NDMC’s CMOR map shows numerous ag-related impact reports from the Black Hills region in southwestern South Dakota. For the week, the region was very dry with warmer-than-normal temperatures (3 to 15+ °F above normal) observed across much of the region, with the greatest anomalies observed in Nebraska and Kansas. Looking at climatological rankings for the past 90-day period (January 1 to April 1), several locations ranked among their warmest on record, including Grand Island, NE (warmest on record; +9 °F departure from normal); North Platte, NE (warmest on record; +10 °F); Rapid City, SD (warmest on record; +9 °F departure from normal); Goodland, KS (warmest on record; +11 °F departure from normal); and Dodge City, KS (warmest on record; +8 °F departure from normal)…

West

Conditions deteriorated significantly on the map this week in response to the combination of record to near-record heat and very poor snowpack conditions. The recent heat wave accelerated snowmelt across the region over the past few weeks, with many NRCS SNOTEL stations reporting little to no snow on the ground or unseasonably low levels. Peak runoff is occurring earlier than normal—or has already passed in some locations—raising concerns about reduced inflows into reservoirs moving through spring and into the summer months. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, Lake Powell is 25% full, while upstream reservoirs show mixed conditions, including Flaming Gorge (82% full), Blue Mesa (50%), and Navajo Lake (62%). In Rio Grande Basin in New Mexico, Elephant Butte is 12% full and Caballo Reservoir is 7% full. In Arizona, the Salt River Project reports the Salt River system at 56% full, the Verde system at 63%, and the combined system at 63% (compared to 70% last year)…

South

On this week’s map, widespread degradations were made in drought-affected areas of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas, while isolated areas of Mississippi and Tennessee saw degradations. During the past 30-day period, the National Drought Mitigation Center’s Conditions Monitoring Observer Reports (CMOR) tool showed numerous impact reports across the region. For the week, dry conditions prevailed across the region. Looking at climatological rankings for the past 90-day period (December 31 to March 31), several locations ranked among their driest on record, including Austin, TX (4th driest; -5.53 inches), Brownsville, TX (driest on record; -3.38 inches), Oklahoma City, OK (driest on record; -3.61 inches), Monticello, AR (driest on record; -8.95 inches), and Jackson, MS (driest on record; -7.4 inches). In Texas, Water for Texas (April 1) reports statewide reservoirs at 73.5% full, with eastern reservoirs in good condition while many western and southern reservoirs remain below normal, including Falcon Reservoir (19% full). Average temperatures for the week were above normal across the region (3 to 15+ °F) with dry conditions prevailing…

Looking Ahead

The NWS Weather Prediction Center 7-Day Quantitative Precipitation Forecast (QPF, liquid equivalent) calls for precipitation accumulations generally ranging from 2 to 4 inches across eastern portions of the Southern Plains, Midwest, and Northeast, with the heaviest totals along a corridor from eastern Texas through the Lower Mississippi Valley into portions of the Upper Mississippi Valley. In the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, light-to-moderate liquid precipitation accumulations ranging from 0.5 to 2 inches are expected. Across the High Plains, light-to-moderate liquid precipitation accumulations ranging from 0.5 to 2 inches are expected, with the greatest totals across portions of the Dakotas. In the West, light-to-moderate liquid precipitation accumulations are expected across areas of the region, with the highest totals across portions of the Pacific Northwest, northern California, and southern Oregon. In the higher elevations, snow is expected across the Sierra Nevada, southern Cascades, northern Great Basin, and portions of the central and northern Rockies. Dry conditions are expected to prevail across much of the Southwest, including areas of southern California, southern Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico.

The 6–10-day temperature outlook (valid April 7–11, 2026) calls for above-normal temperatures across much of the western U.S., Southern Plains, and areas of the South, with the highest probabilities centered over the California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. Below-normal temperatures are favored across the Northern Plains as well as the New England. Near-normal temperatures are expected across much of the eastern U.S., including the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, as well as portions of Texas. In terms of precipitation, the 6–10-day outlook calls for above-normal precipitation across areas of the eastern half of the western U.S., Plains states, South, much of the Midwest, and Florida. Below-normal precipitation is favored across portions of the Mid-Atlantic and southern extent of New England. Near-normal precipitation is expected across areas outside of these regions, including portions of the western U.S. and Southeast.

Click the link to read the article on the KJCT website (Matthew Kryger). Here’s an excerpt:

March 27, 2026

Warm and dry conditions in Western Colorado are speeding up runoff from an already below normal snowpack. And it is causing concern among communities. “There are smaller communities that have a single source of drinking water supply that are concerned about what their source is going to be producing as the summer goes on if the snow melts out too quickly,” said [Christina] Medved…Another concern is having enough water for irrigation.

“The green grass lawns, the big parks and fields, they take a lot of water to keep green. And so, we’ve already been hearing from communities that if they have to, they will stop watering those fields,” said Medved.

The dry season we have had also means concern for wildfire season. “If you have an early melt out and you’re able to dry out the landscape by June, June tends to be a drier month. And so that tends to be associated with some higher-than-normal fire danger,” said Goble.

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Climate Center website (Allie Mazurek):

March 26, 2026

Last week’s heat wave was record-smashing, extraordinary, and impossible to ignore. Given that temperatures were more typical of what we’d expect in June, we’ll try not to judge you if you felt the need to turn on your A/C. 🙂

In this blog post, we’ll provide some climate context on last week’s mind-boggling temperatures and touch on the current drought and snowpack situation. And while we’ll focus on the heat from last week here, it’s worth noting that yesterday, March 25, featured yet another round of record-breaking temperatures across Colorado, including new March high temperature records in Denver (87°F) and Grand Junction (88°F).  

Widespread, eye-popping warmth 

For pretty much all of Colorado, last week brought the warmest March temperatures ever recorded. There were far more stations in the state that broke all-time monthly high records for March than did not. Here’s a look at the records that were set at some of our long-term climate sites:

From the [table] above, you’ll see that we didn’t just break previous monthly records by a small margin; new records were set by several degrees. It would be noteworthy to have new daily climate records were set by these kinds of margins, but to see monthly records shattered by more than 5°F across numerous stations is truly remarkable.  

Another way of looking at this is by comparing the highest temperature observed this March (through the 22^nd) to the highest temperature observed in all Marches from 1951—2025 in a gridded temperature dataset (in this case, NOAA’s nClimGrid). Nearly the entire state is red, meaning this March broke the previous record over this time period. (The main exception is at the highest elevations, where it was slightly warmer in March 1987.) Furthermore, most of the state saw temperatures at least 5°F higher than had previously been seen in March. The all-time March record for Colorado of 96°F at Holly in 1907 was not broken, but was tied at numerous locations including La Junta, Burlington, Campo, and Walsh.

To put an even bigger exclamation point on these incredible records, there were several places in Colorado that not only set new all-time records for March, but they also saw warmer temperatures than their all-time records for April. This includes places like Alamosa (new March record of 83°F; current April record is 80°F) and Fort Collins (new March record of 91°F; current April record is 89°F). Comparing last week’s temperatures to records since 1951, you’ll notice that most of the Front Range Urban Corridor, San Luis Valley, and lower elevations in southeastern Colorado saw warmer temperatures than any March or April day in the past 70+ years: 

As you might expect, the kind of heat that we saw last week across Colorado is more typical of June or even July. In Fort Collins, the reading of 91°F on March 21 marked Fort Collins’s earliest 90°F or warmer day (the previous record was May 5, set back in 2000). On average, Fort Collins doesn’t see its first 90°F or warmer day until June 15:

Last week’s heat was not only remarkable in terms of intensity but also longevity. The most significant heat occurred across four days (March 18-21). Over that period, several locations set new monthly records every one of those days, with each day being warmer than the last. This was a common theme throughout much of the western US:

In Colorado, this long-lasting, remarkable heat was far beyond anything we’ve seen in March. Comparing last week’s heat to previous March “heat waves” (defined as days with the warmest 4-day averaged temperatures), it was a step far above the rest. Statewide averaged temperatures during March 18-21, 2026 period were nearly 5°F warmer than Colorado’s 2^nd-warmest March heatwave (March 23-26, 2004): 

Snowpack is rapidly declining 

One of the most concerning consequences of last week’s is the impact to our snowpack. If you’ve been following along throughout the winter, then you’re well-aware that Colorado has been seeing its worst snowpack in at least 45 years. And the very warm conditions over the past week have exacerbated an already bad situation.  

Looking at the statewide water-year-to-date snowpack in the SNOTEL network, it’s clear that snow water equivalent has taken a massive nosedive over the past week or so. On average, Colorado’s peak snowpack date is April 7, meaning that we should still be seeing snowpack accumulate in late March. Instead, averaged over the state, snow water equivalent has declined by over 2.5 inches in the last week. We typically don’t see snowpack melt this quickly until May, so to observe this trend so early in the season is highly concerning. 

Statewide snowpack currently sits at [29%] of the 1991-2020 median. Given the current conditions and forecasts, it’s very possible that many locations have already seen their peak snowpack. Every major river basin in the state is running way-below average, with 71 of the 92 active SNOTEL stations reporting their lowest values on record:

In a previous blog post, we discussed that a combination of SNOTEL data (dating back to the 1980s) and manual snow measurements (dating back to the 1930s) have been used to evaluate how this year’s snowpack stacks up against past winters. Throughout much of the winter, the story has been that this year’s snowpack is very bad, but it hasn’t been quite as bad as the winters of 1976-77 and 1980-81. However, with last week’s rapid early season melting, conditions have deteriorated further. We’ll wait for official confirmation from snow course data at the end of the month, but current data suggests that we’re now sitting at Colorado’s worst snowpack on record, surpassing the winters of 1976-77 and 1980-81. 

Drought conditions are deteriorating 

When discussing the drought landscape, all eyes have been on the major snow deficits in Colorado’s mountain areas, but that isn’t the only part of the state that’s been seeing worsening drought conditions. Most of Colorado’s lower elevations have also seen substantial precipitation deficits in recent months. As such, drought conditions throughout the state have worsened and expanded over the past few months.

Per the latest US Drought Monitor, approximately 91% of the state is experiencing at least abnormally dry conditions, and ~74% of Colorado is experiencing drought (D1 or worse). Those numbers have increased from 54% and 45%, respectively, since the start of the water year on October 1, 2025. The recent warmth brought particularly large changes to the drought monitor last week, as Colorado’s exceptional drought or worse area (D3 or higher) nearly doubled from ~13% last week to ~24% in the latest drought monitor.

Consequences from the low snowpack are growing

Impacts from this year’s low snowpack are increasing as governments agencies and industries that rely on it are beginning to respond and plan for additional effects. The expanding drought (in part due to the low snowpack) has prompted the Colorado Governor’s Office to activate the State Drought Task Force for the first time since 2020. Utility departments and water managers have begun to initiate drought response plans and implement water restrictions. And ski areas are planning to close earlier than expected due to poor conditions. Unfortunately, as we anticipate well-below average runoff this spring, impacts will likely expand further.

The one piece of potential good news that we’ll end this post with is a pattern shift is likely in early April, which is expected to bring precipitation chances to Colorado. While the moisture won’t be nearly enough to make up for the major deficits we’ve seen accumulate over the last several months, I think we can all agree that we’ll take anything we can get.