Click the link to read the article on the Sky-Hi News website (Ali Longwell):
January 25, 2026
During a Jan. 22 Water Conditions Monitoring Committee, Brian Domonkos, the Colorado snow survey supervisor for the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, reported that the best snowpack conditions in Colorado, in the Rio Grande basin, still rank as the fourth worst in the last 40 years on record. Statewide snowpack and snowpack in the Colorado River Headwaters basin are both at record lows for the period on record, Domonkos reported.
“At this point in the year, we are 51% of the way through the winter or the snowpack accumulation season,” Domonkos said. “There’s a very, very small chance that we could get back to normal at this point.”
“We have 4.8 inches of water content on average across all of our snow measuring sites in Colorado,” Domonkos said. “Typically, at this point in the year, we have about 8.5 inches of water content (in the snowpack).”
While it’s a bit early to look at predictions for the spring runoff, “it’s very likely that we’ll wind up seeing below normal runoff projections this year,” Domonkos said.
For Colorado to end the winter with a normal amount of snowpack, the state “needs about 145% of normal snow accumulation,” he said, adding that this is “close to needing the maximum amount of snow accumulation that we’ve ever seen in the last 40 years in order to get back to normal.”