Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Shane Benjamin, Reuben M. Schafir, and Jessica Bowman). Here’s an excerpt:
February 14, 2025
The storm is good news for the region’s water supply, which has languished in recent weeks. The SNOTEL site at Cascade Creek, just north of Purgatory Resort, reported 18 inches of snow accumulation since Thursday afternoon, which translated to 1.2 inches of snow-water equivalent. The side near the top of Coal Bank Pass reported 20 inches of snow accumulation and 1.8 inches snow-water equivalent. Lemon Reservoir had received 16 inches of snow with 1½ inches of snow-water equivalent as of 6 p.m. Friday….
Peter Goble, an assistant state climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center, said the snowpack is lower than it has been since 2018 – and one storm won’t turn that around.
“Every storm like this is a storm we’ll take, at this point,” he said, but he noted that the region needs several more storms to catch up to normal snowpack levels.
Soil moisture in the region is not as dry as recent years, he said. And that’s good news because arid soils suck up snowmelt, reducing runoff.
