From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb):

Ruedi Reservoir has basically filled. It hit its water level high mark on July 2. Since that time, we’ve seen inflows to the reservoir start to back off a little. As a result, tomorrow [July 8] we will curtail the releases from the dam to the Fryingpan River by about 50 cfs. We will make the change around 10:00 a.m. After, flows past the Ruedi Dam gage should be about 265 cfs.

From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb):

Earlier today [July 7], we reduced releases from Green Mountain Dam to the Lower Blue River. We have seen the inflows start to back off a bit. As a result, the Lower Blue is now running at about 1480 cfs.

The weekly Roaring Fork Watershed Stream Flow Report http://t.co/tjXWnveDP5 http://t.co/qJ3IDc1ePM

— RoaringFkConservancy (@rfconservancy) July 3, 2014

Here’s the release from US Senator Michael Bennet’s office:

Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet today announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued disaster designations for ten Southwest and San Luis Valley counties due to severe drought conditions. The designations make farmers and ranchers in these counties eligible for assistance from the Farm Service Agency.

“Drought conditions continue to plague many parts of Colorado, and our producers’ crops and livestock are suffering,” Bennet said. “These designations make crucial assistance available to our farmers and ranchers that are dealing with losses due to the severe weather. This is why we fought hard to get a full, five-year Farm Bill signed into law so our producers have a safety net to help them through tough times like these.”
Producers in the following counties are eligible for assistance: Archuleta, Conejos, Dolores, Hinsdale, La Plata, Mineral, Montezuma, Rio Grande, San Juan, and San Miguel [ed. emphasis mine].

Producers in counties designated as primary or contiguous disaster areas are eligible to be considered for FSA emergency loans. Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the date of the disaster declaration to apply for assistance. Local FSA offices can provide affected farmers and ranchers with additional information.

From The Denver Post (Jason Blevins):

Colorado rafting outfitters are relishing a surge in visitation after two years of business-sinking drought and wildfire. As river flows become less intimidating, trips are selling out. Guests are spending more. Snowpack lingers in the high country, promising a paddling season that could push into fall.

“All the indicators are super positive right now,” said Alex Mickel, who has all 90 of his employees working this week as guests flock to his Mild To Wild rafting and tour company in Durango. “We are definitely benefiting from the economic rebound, too. People are looking at longer trips, stepping up to longer days, adding Jeep tours.”

Signs are good that Colorado’s rafting industry could host more than 500,000 user days, returning to the heydays of 2006, 2007 and 2008. Even if the visits don’t reach record levels, tourists are opening wallets wider, with resort towns across the state reporting record sales tax revenue last summer and this past winter. Last year, more than 461,000 rafters riding Colorado’s rivers and streams spent $56.7 million, creating an economic impact of $145.3 million. That was a step toward recovery from the drought- and wildfire-plagued 2012 season, which ranks as the second-worst year for Colorado rafting since 1995. But 2013, too, was haunted by wildfire.

Fires around Durango pinched traffic on the popular Animas River. The Royal Gorge fire near Cañon City deterred rafters on the Arkansas River, the most trafficked river in the country. The heavily publicized Black Forest fire in Colorado Springs kept more rafters at bay.

“We will suffer more from a fire up by Colorado Springs or Denver than we will from a fire down here because those are the ones who get the big press,” said Durango’s Mickel, noting how wildfire coverage tends to deter vacationers.

This year — knock wood — lasting snowpacks and spring storms have dampened the wildfire scene, giving outfitters a head start on what could be the best season in five years.

As river flows recede from the initial gush of spring snowmelt, rafters are flocking. Last week, Ryan Barwick’s MAD Adventures and Rocky Mountain Adventures rafts filled to capacity on the Colorado and Cache la Poudre rivers and Clear Creek.

“My gut feeling is that we are seeing some pent-up demand, but it’s hard to quantify,” said Barwick, who had all 75 of his employees on deck as he reached capacity for tours on the Poudre and Clear Creek. “The economy has stabilized and people are traveling. We had our best preseason bookings in five years. Now that we are past the high-water phase, the floodgates are open.”

High flows and stormy afternoons delayed the start of the rafting season, which hits its peak this holiday weekend. But the winter’s healthy snowfall has built a lasting snowpack up high, translating to consistent flows in rivers down low. Flowing rivers have sated agricultural users farther east, and those users have yet to place widespread calls for irrigation water from reservoirs. That means rafters could enjoy sustained, buoyant flows when those calls do happen in the next two months.

The river riding season is shaping up to last well into September, maybe even October, said David Costlow, president of the Colorado River Outfitters Association, which represents 44 outfitters operating on 19 rivers and creeks in the state. That promise of consistent flows allows outfitters to book trips into the shoulder months.

“When you are not sure what the water flows are going to be, you tend not to book. But when you are going to have flows, you are more positive and people are more inclined to book trips,” said Costlow, who predicts the season user tally could top the half-million mark last seen in 2008. “Let’s hope things stay strong for a while.”

Meanwhile, the runoff was pretty well-behaved keeping flooding losses down. Here’s a report from Ryan Maye Handy writing for the Fort Collins Coloradon. Here’s an excerpt:

The snowmelt season is over in Northern Colorado and it was far less damaging than state officials initially feared.

Although state highway officials were bracing for catastrophic spring flooding in areas weakened by the September 2013 flood, there was little severe flood damage along the Front Range as the state’s snowpack melted…

Water flow in parts of the canyon almost broke records this year, according to measurements taken at the canyon’s mouth. There the river hit its peak on May 31, when it hit 6,000 cubic feet per second — equal to about 6,000 basketballs floating by each second.

That’s the second-highest peak flow recorded at the canyon mouth since 1957, according to records kept by the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District.

“The only other time it went higher was in 1983, when it was 6,725 cfs,” said Brian Werner, a spokesman for the district.

The Poudre’s levels can be fickle — subject to rain, snowmelt and water use — and rafter Ryan Barwick, owner of Rocky Mountain Adventures, cautioned against letting one gauge speak for the rest of the river.

“We can have great flows up there for rafting, but have a trickle at the canyon mouth,” he said.

The 6,000 cfs level didn’t strike him as unusually high.

“If you talk to most boaters, they remember most years when over 5,000 in the canyon was commonplace,” he added.

The mountains west of Fort Collins have been emptied of most of their water, said Treste Huse, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder. Snowpack measurement gauges at Joe Wright Reservoir are down to 1.7 inches of snow water equivalent — the amount of water the snow contains. The reservoir gauge had 32 inches of snow water equivalent at its peak.

Many of the northern Front Range’s snow gauges are “all melted out,” Huse said.

Spring rains in May and snowpack levels have left most of Northern Water’s reservoirs full — Horsetooth Reservoir has been full at least twice this spring, and Lake Granby is just 3 feet from spilling over, Werner said.

“We are as full as we have ever been,” he said. “We may have been this full in 1962.

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

Summary

During the past 7-days, a series of weak upper-level disturbances and frontal systems at the surface brought widespread precipitation to much of the contiguous United States, outside of the Southwest and California. Heavy rain (2”-4”, locally greater) fell across portions of the Upper Mississippi Valley, the northern Plains, the Pacific Northwest, the west-central Gulf Coast region, the general vicinity of the southern Appalachians, and the Northeast. A low pressure area off the East Coast of Florida was in the process of developing into a tropical depression, and would become Tropical Storm Arthur by the end of the period.

Southern and Central Plains

Two to four inch rains fell over southern and central portions of Nebraska, prompting 1-category upgrades for these areas. In central and southern Kansas, 2-5 inch rains (locally heavier) warranted one-category improvements, especially in places which received two to three times their normal rainfall for the week. In Oklahoma, widespread one-category improvements were made in the northern portion of the state, due to very heavy rains during the past 30-days. For example, in the town of Buffalo, OK, 10.44 inches of rain fell during the past month, compared to the normal June rainfall of 4.08 inches. Flash flooding was also reported in Buffalo. On June 30th, the Oklahoma Panhandle experienced a very impressive dust storm. In the southeast portion of the state, minor degradations were rendered to the drought depiction. Texas had an unexpectedly wet week, with very heavy precipitation along the Gulf Coast (generally 3-5 inches, locally greater), and moderate to heavy precipitation (0.5-3.0 inches) in the interior East, supporting 1-category improvements. Relatively small alterations were made to the depiction in southern and far western Texas, both improvements and degradations.

Southwest and California

Little if any precipitation was observed in the Southwest during the past week. In western New Mexico, severe drought (D2) was downgraded to extreme drought (D3), and a general one-category degradation was rendered to the depiction in the southernmost counties of Luna, Dona Ana, and Otero. El Paso has received only 25 percent of its normal precipitation since January 1, 2014, making this the 7th driest year on record (so far) since 1879. High temperatures have been exacerbating drought-related impacts. Every day in June, El Paso was at or above normal, with a June departure of about +6.1 degrees F, making this the second warmest June on record, only behind June of 1994. In northeast Utah, most of the D2 area was downgraded to D3 conditions, while moderate rain (0.5-2.0 inches) supported a one-category improvement to parts of northeast Colorado. In southern Nevada, the continued lack of rain prompted the expansion of extreme drought (D3) conditions across parts of Nye, Lincoln, and Clark Counties, while in southern California, exceptional drought (D4) was expanded across Ventura, Los Angeles, and much of Orange Counties.

Looking Ahead
During July 3-7, 2014, most of the contiguous United States is expected to receive a half-inch or less of rain, though there are a few exceptions. Northern and central Florida, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, near the mid-Atlantic Coast, and the southern and eastern New England coasts may get 2-4 inches of rain, in part from what is currently Tropical Storm (projected to be hurricane) Arthur and from an active cold front approaching from the west. In the Middle Mississippi Valley, 0.5-1.0 inch of rain is forecast during this period, while 0.5-1.5 inches of rain is expected in association with the onset of the Southwest Monsoon across portions of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Texas. Temperatures during the period are anticipated to be mostly within 4 degrees of normal, though very brief departures of 8-10 degrees above normal are projected for the northern Plains region.

For the ensuing 5-day period, July 8-12, 2014, there are enhanced odds of above-median rainfall in the east-central CONUS, the Great Lakes region, southern Florida, and the Southwest. Below-median precipitation is favored over the Pacific Northwest, the northern Rockies, and southwest Alaska. Mean temperatures for this period are favored to be above-normal over approximately the eastern and western thirds of the lower 48 states, and the southern half of Alaska, and near to below-normal temperatures are favored over the central third of the CONUS.

From The Pueblo Chieftain (Matt Hildner):

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated three San Luis Valley counties as drought-related natural disaster areas. The move, announced this week, makes farmers and ranchers in Conejos, Mineral and Rio Grande counties eligible for low-interest emergency loans.

While drought conditions have improved in the valley since last year, the three counties were eligible because they are contiguous to counties on the other side of the Continental Divide that have been declared primary disaster areas.

Farmers have until the beginning of March to apply for the loans from the Farm Service Agency.

The U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists the valley as abnormally dry, its least severe drought designation.

Last year, the valley was mired in severe drought, the third-most extreme of the monitor’s five designations.

Pueblo County and seven other Southeastern Colorado counties were given natural disaster designations in January.

[Dick Wolfe] said I-70, which runs east and west through the Centennial State, has become something of a line of demarcation. Agricultural producers north of I-70 are seeing more favorable water supplies in 2014. Traveling south of the interstate, conditions begin to change and become more extreme.

“A large driver of the water in aquifers is snowpack and runoff,” Wolfe commented, adding that snowpack was generally good in the Rocky Mountains this year. “The lowest water levels on record are in the Rio Grande Valley. In the Rio Grande, runoff continues to be bad.” Much of Colorado’s San Luis Valley, known for its production of potatoes for the fresh market, lies within the Rio Grande Water Conservation District.

The district saw the formation of Colorado’s first-ever groundwater management subdistrict which continues to take measures to reduce water consumption by agricultural interests and, at the same time, address ongoing depletions in the aquifer. “Mother Nature is that other part we have no control over,” Wolfe commented. “Over the last 10 to 15 years, the southern half of the state has been getting drier. And the Rio Grande has been consistently been in drought conditions.”

Elsewhere in Colorado, it’s another story. “The Arkansas River Basin is not looking too bad in the upper part of the state,” Wolfe noted. The headwaters of the river are located in northern Colorado, and the basin supplies water to agricultural producers in southeast Colorado.

Growers in Colorado’s Western Slope, located west of the Continental Divide, are generally reporting good water availability this season for their crops. The Colorado River and its tributaries flow through the region. “The Colorado and Gunnison rivers had great runoff conditions in the north,” Wolfe said. “The south [Western Slope] is in drought.”

There is considerable agricultural production in northeastern Colorado, the location of the South Platte River Basin. Last September, unprecedented flooding occurred in the area, with the greatest impacts affecting infrastructure and residential areas. “The runoff is now over, but we are not out of the woods yet,” said Wolfe of the potential for possible flooding attributed to rainfall.

There is concern in the South Platte River Basin about high water tables in the Sterling and Gilcrest/LaSalle areas. “That’s certainly a concern at the governor’s level,” Wolfe commented…

Officials continue with recovery efforts in northern Colorado following 2013 flooding. Wolfe said 27 dams were damaged. “That didn’t make those reservoirs unusable,” he commented. “Seventy-five percent of structures have been restored from last year’s damage.” Another 23 stream-gauging stations and 220 diversion structures were also damaged.

From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb):

Inflow keeps coming up. As a result, we are upping the release from Green Mountain Dam to the Lower Blue River, again. By 4 p.m. [July 2] the release from the dam to the river should be around 1700 cfs.

From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb):

Not a lot of changes for the east slope of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project this week. Horsetooth and Carter are full and will stay full through the holiday weekend. Flatiron, Pinewood and Lake Estes all fluctuate slightly, due mostly to power generation, but remain at the upper end of their storage pools. In fact, the water elevation at Pinewood is on the rise again after going down last week.

The outflow from Olympus Dam to the canyon remains at 125 cfs.

Our big news is at the mouth of the Big Thompson Canyon. We have curtailed the release of water through the concrete chute to the river. Instead, we are once again running water through the Big Thompson Power Plant. This is an exciting moment for us as the plant had been off-line since the flood.

From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb):

We have increased releases twice from Green Mountain since my note yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, we went up to about 1400 cfs. This morning around 9 a.m. we went up to about 1600 cfs. We are still storing in Green Mountain Reservoir. It is 97% full.

The reason for these changes is we are seeing the high elevation snow melt runoff come down the Blue River. It is very likely we will see another change or two before the Holiday Weekend.

Click here to read the current assessment. Click here to to to the NIDIS website hosted by the Colorado Climate Center.

Warmer weather is bringing down that high elevation snow pack. [June 30], Denver Water upped releases from Dillon Reservoir. [July 1], we are increasing releases from Green Mountain to the Lower Blue in two changes of 100 cfs each. At 9:00 this morning, releases will go up to 1200 cfs. At 10:00 a.m., releases will go up to 1300 cfs.

From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):

Despite only two days with temperatures over the century mark, June was hotter and drier than usual. Monday’s high temperature of 103 tied the record for the last day of June, following a 100-degree reading on Sunday. Yet water use is down in Pueblo and the surrounding area.

“We’re unusually low,” said David Simpson, manager of the St. Charles Mesa Water District. “We really haven’t peaked at all.”

The district east of Pueblo usually sees use of 5.5 million gallons per day during hot spells, but so far has not gone above 4.5 mgd.

The Pueblo Board of Water Works is about 12 percent behind last year in pumping for the month of June, said Seth Clayton, director of administrative services.

“The city is using less in the parks,” Clayton said.

The city’s water use has averaged about 39 mgd, compared with 44 mgd last year in June. Peak use came June 20, at 46 mgd, while a year ago, the peak hit nearly 50 mgd.

“I think it’s been a little more humid, if you can ever say it’s humid in Pueblo,” Clayton said. “I think the afternoon cloud cover has helped things.”

Pueblo West has seen about 93 percent of 2013 water use so far this year. June watering was down 10 percent from 2013 and 13 percent from 2012, said Jack Johnston, metro district manager.

“We’ve hit a peak of 9 million gallons per day so far, and expect to hit 10 million in the next few days,” Johnston said. Consumers in all three areas are tending to use less water since the severe drought of 2001-03.

“We have never come back to the usage we saw prior to 2002,” Simpson said. “People have started using water more wisely.”

In Pueblo, the trend has been the same, with reduced water use in similar weather conditions for the past 12 years. One problem with selling less water is that it hurts revenues for water providers. Outdoor water use accounts for about half of all water sales.

“A lot of ours is reduced consumption by the city of Pueblo, which is not paid for anyway,” Clayton said. “On the revenue side, we’ll make up for it in other areas.”