From the Summit Daily News (Robert Allen):
With less snowfall this winter, snowpack for the end of January is about 71 percent of average in the local Blue River Basin area, according to data from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. The Colorado River headwaters region runoff forecasts range from about 65 to 75 percent of normal, said Mike Gillespie, snow survey supervisor with the Conservation Service…
He said El Niño is likely to blame for this winter’s weather patterns. “Those January storms were pretty much a classic pattern for what we expect (with an El Niño system) that really pounds California, Arizona and New Mexico,” Gillespie. “We get lucky in the San Juans, but it doesn’t really get north of there.”
But the situation could be worse if reservoir levels weren’t as high. At the end of December 2009, the Dillon Reservoir level was 107 percent of average, according to the NRCS website at www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov.
More snowpack news from Bill Jackson writing for The Greeley Tribune. From the article:
Statewide, water content of the snowpack was 86 percent of average and 73 percent of last year’s snowpack totals, according to Allen Green, state conservationist. The increased totals across southern Colorado were essentially offset by the decreases in percentage across the central and northern basins, Green said in a press release. That has resulted in the same statewide snowpack percentage for two consecutive months.
More coverage from The Denver Post (Yesenia Robles):
According to the latest snowpack report from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Colorado basins were at 86 percent of average as of Monday. The percentage is the lowest since 2003.
Catching up to average snowpack levels becomes more of a longshot each month. “We need 125 percent of average snowfall for the next 2½ months,” said Mike Gillespie, snow-survey supervisor with the NRCS…The basins need more than 30 inches each month to catch up. Snowpack levels are below average in every Colorado river basin. Only the San Juan, Animas and Dolores basins are close to average levels…
Gillespie blamed the El Niño weather pattern. “Typically, storm tracks enter further south, mostly into Arizona and New Mexico,” Gillespie said. He said snowpack levels in those states are being reported in some areas up to 300 percent of average. Another trend during El Niño years is to see a few big storms later in the season that make up for the dry months of winter. “During this kind of a year, it’s very typical,” Gillespie said. “In 2003, also an El Niño year, we saw the blizzard of March 2003 that brought many feet of snow in Denver. It caught us up to average.”