Here’s a report about the current snowpack and how the Upper Rio Grande Basin is drying over time, from Ruth Heide writing for the Valley Courier. You numbers junkies will want to click through for all the detail. Here’s an excerpt:
Dry may be the new normal for the San Luis Valley. “We are having to adjust to a new normal,” Rio Grande Water Users Association Attorney Bill Paddock said during the water users’ annual meeting this week in Monte Vista, “not of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s but of the 2000’s when there is fundamentally less water. We don’t know when this will change.”[…]
Colorado Division of Water Resources Division 3 Engineer Craig Cotten said the initial projection for the annual index supply for the Rio Grande this year is 435,000 acre feet, currently estimated to be a little more than last year’s 407,000 acre feet. The 407,000 acre feet last year was about 66 percent of average for the Rio Grande, “definitely not a real good year,” Cotten said.
The 435,000 acre-foot estimate takes into account the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) irrigation season forecast (April-September) of 360,000 acre feet.
Of the estimated annual index of 435,000 acre feet, the Rio Grande will have to deliver about 25 percent or about 107,800 acre feet downstream to New Mexico and Texas to meet Rio Grande Compact obligations. Because of winter flows sent downriver prior to the irrigation season and expected to be delivered after it ends this fall, the curtailment on the river during the irrigation season will likely be about 12 percent, Cotten told Rio Grande Water Users Association members on Tuesday…
Cotten reported the snowpack on the Upper Rio Grande Basin as of March 5 was about 78 percent of normal. “Currently we are a fair amount lower than we should be, than the average, lower than we have been the last three years,” he said.
He said to reach average snowpack would require 189 percent moisture from now on.
More Rio Grande River Basin coverage here.