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December 30. 2024
A mild December caps a year of unusual weather for Alamosa and the greater San Luis Valley. Or maybe it’s just the new normal in a century of changing climates and chaotic weather patterns.
The month of December brought 10 different 50-degree weather days, and an average temperature of 45 degrees – or 10 degrees above what’s been historically normal, according to figures from the National Weather Service.
On Sunday, Dec. 29, the daytime high of 57 degrees in Alamosa established a new record for the date, making December 2024 one of the warmest Decembers this century.
The summer and late fall were strange as well this year. Between May and August, the Valley floor received 6.14 inches of rain, making it one of the wettest four-month periods on record this century.
For perspective, the San Luis Valley typically experiences 7 inches of total precipitation and around 30 inches of measurable snow each year. In 2024, Alamosa experienced 11.36 inches of precipitation and 37 inches of snow.
Those late spring and summer rains came off a record amount of total snow in March when 14.5 inches fell, way above the 4 inches of snow that is typical for the month. Indeed, 2024 was a strange, wet weather year.
Yet, the Upper Rio Grande Basin continues to struggle and local irrigators remain under state pressure to reduce their groundwater pumping and retire more fields. In August alarm bells went off for water managers when readings of the unconfined aquifer storage levels shockingly showed the critical aquifer near its lowest measurable point.
“You’re always under pressure and the sense of urgency is always there,” said Cleave Simpson of the stress farmers and ranchers in the San Luis Valley face to recover the ailing aquifers of the Rio Grande. He works as general manager for the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and represents the Valley and most of southwestern Colorado as a state senator.
In his role as state legislator, Simpson sponsored legislation that resulted in $30 million committed to pay Valley irrigators to retire more groundwater wells to reduce their groundwater pumping. Over the past dozen years, payments made to either temporarily or permanently fallow agricultural fields and reduce the amount of groundwater pumped in the Valley have totaled $100 million, according to figures Simpson cited on this episode of The Valley Pod.
The podcast episode with Simpson looks back on the century and how the new millennium, now 25 years in, has been dominated by the effects of climate change.
“From climate, in particular, 2002 was this critical moment in time for us. That’s when the whole paradigm shifted for the San Luis Valley and Colorado and really the western U.S.,” said Simpson. “That was the worst drought in our recorded history. The Rio Grande had never seen those kinds of diminished flows, ever, since we started recording it.
“It’s basically since 2002 till today, that’s 22 years of this drying, this no snow pack, this change in how runoff occurs, and the timing and the volumes.”
Simpson and others who closely follow the weather patterns of the San Luis Valley say it’s no longer drought but aridification settling into the soil that the Valley will wrestle with as the 21st century proceeds.
We’ll see now what 2025 has in store.
