The CWCB Water Availability Task Force is meeting today. I don’t expect to see a dry eye in the place when Mage Skordahl from the Natural Resources Conservation Service gives her snowpack and precipitation report.

I’ll be live-Tweeting the meeting: @coyotegulch hash tag #cwcbwatf.

Colorado is the “Mother of Rivers” according to Justice Hobbs’ book of poetry. It’s true, the Colorado, Platte, Arkansas and Rio Grande rise here. Today be thankful that we have a good supply replenished each year by the snowpack and that our water problems here in Colorado come down to moving water from agriculture, removing water from the environment and elimintating bluegrass (someday).

Today is World Water Day. I’m always struck by the statistics around child mortality around the world from waterborne disease.

Take some time today to learn how you can help.

It’s not shaping up to be a good year for diverters. We’ve had it easy the past three water years in the South Platte basin and storage is still very good. With all the warm and windy weather folks are starting to talk about the possible sublimation of the snowpack. Click on the thumbnail graphic to the right for the latest snowpack map from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

From the Loveland Reporter-Herald (Pamela Dickman):

The amount of water in the snow, as of Monday, is 70 percent of average in the Upper Colorado basin and 73 percent of average in the South Platte basin — the two basins that affect Northern Colorado.

From the Boulder Daily Camera (Laura Snider):

On the eastern side of the Continental Divide, where Boulder draws the majority of its water, conditions are slightly better. In the South Platte River Basin, which encompasses Boulder County, the snowpack total is at 79 percent, and in the much smaller Boulder Creek Basin, the snowpack is 104 percent of average. Most towns in Boulder County, including Boulder, draw some of their water from the South Platte River Basin and pump some of their water across the Continental Divide from the headwaters of the Colorado River, where the snowpack is 71 percent of normal…

At the end of March 2002, the snowpack in the Colorado River Basin was 68 percent of average for that time of year, and the snowpack in the South Platte River Basin was just 52 percent of average. The snowpack in the Boulder Creek Basin was 50 percent.

From the Cortez Journal (Reid Wright):

Water officials are optimistic that McPhee Reservoir will fill this spring, possibly offering the chance for a water release for rafters and ecological efforts on the Lower Dolores River. As of last week, measurements of high altitude snow in the basin feeding the reservoir indicated snow levels at 84 percent of average. “The reservoir will fill this year,” said Mike Preston, general manager of the Dolores Water Conservancy District. “I’m feeling pretty confident about that. But it’s a question of what we’re going to have in the way of rafting flows. If we stay in this 84-85 percent realm, we could have a pretty decent spill.”[…]

“What was a little spooky about this year, in the early season we weren’t getting much snow,” Preston said. Snowpack lingered at dismal levels below 50 percent of average until storms in February brought snow levels back up to near-average…

Combined with 141,000 acre feet already stored in the reservoir, the snow melt forecast adds up to a full reservoir in the spring.

“We’re sitting 16,000 acre feet higher than we were this time last year,” Preston said. “So our reservoir is really in good shape.” McPhee Reservoir provides drinking and irrigation water for much of Montezuma and Dolores counties…

While Preston emphasized it is not set in stone, the current forecast indicates a spill worthy of 10 days of whitewater boating that fluctuates between 900 and 2,000 cubic feet per second. “Right now, we’d like to do 2,000 cfs over Memorial Day,” he said. “The nice thing about 2,000, is it’s a brisk raft trip. Quite a few people can fit on the river when it’s flowing like that. And it’s pretty comfortable. It covers up the big rocks and makes for smooth sailing.”[…]

More up-to-date information is expected to be provided at a McPhee Reservoir and Dolores Project operation meeting, currently set for 7 p.m. March 21 at the Dolores Community Center. Topics of discussion will focus on anticipated water releases to the lower Dolores River and an overview of the Dolores Project.

I’ve known Chris Woodka for a few years now — since I’ve been linking and excerpting his work from The Pueblo Chieftain — and I count him as a friend and mentor. He has taught me much over the years by just reading his stuff. Here’s a profile from Matt Jenkins writing for the High Country News. You have to subscribe to read the whole thing. Here’s the lede:

In 2004, Pueblo Chieftain publisher Bob Rawlings, assisted by his daughter, Jane, was running full-throated editorials against water transfers and occasionally making news himself. The not-exactly-impartial coverage of the controversy bothered Chris Woodka, then a managing editor. So he asked to be assigned to the water beat. “I said, ‘OK: I’m going to do it objectively. I’m going to do it as a reporter,’ ” Woodka explains. ” ‘And Bob and Jane, you’re just going to be news sources.’ ” Today, Woodka, 57, is Colorado’s sole remaining full-time water reporter. He has worked hard to separate himself from the Chieftain’s editorial slant, and has built a reputation for his fair coverage of an extremely complicated and contentious subject. “You kind of make your own luck,” Woodka says. “Your sources have to be good, and you don’t burn them.”

Click here and here for articles written by Woodka quoted on Coyote Gulch.

I’m on deadline at Colorado Central Magazine. I’ll see you Monday morning bright and early.

Click on the thumbnail graphic to the right for the current snowpack map from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

From the Fort Collins Coloradoan (Bobby Magill):

…an average year on the Poudre may seem like a dream for optimists because the mid-March mountain snowpack is far below average – 81 percent of average across the South Platte Basin as of Wednesday morning, according to U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service data. Temperatures have been high and the skies have been blue in the mountains – all elements that have conspired to shave 10 inches off the snowpack in the mountains of Northern Colorado and southern Wyoming over the last several days, said meteorologist Mike Weiland, who specializes in hydrology at the National Weather Service in Cheyenne, Wyo…

Northern Colorado’s strongest snowstorms often come in March and April, said Boulder NWS meteorologist Bernie Meier, but this year could be different, especially over the next couple of weeks. Warm, dry weather both at high and low elevations are expected to hang around through Sunday, he said, with a possible chance for snow in the mountains early next week. “Most of the models now keep that system to the south and move it off to the east,” Meier said. “After that, it looks like another dry pattern through the later part of next week.”[…]

The spring runoff forecast for the Poudre and other rivers in Northern Colorado isn’t much better. The NWS’ March 6 water supply outlook for April through September calls for stream flows to be well below average all across the region. The Poudre’s flow is expected to be 13 percent below average for that period, with the Big Thompson expected to run 19 percent below average. The North Platte through North Park is expected to run 45 percent below average. That’s not all: “The forecast is for above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation in general,” Weiland said. “The chances of building up snowpack aren’t as good as one would hope.”

Click on the thumbnail graphic to the right for the current snowpack map from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.