Day: February 7, 2026

Western U.S. #snowpack is worth trillions of dollars: Putting a price tag on the water stored in the region’s high-elevation frozen reservoir — Mitch Tobin (WaterDesk.org)

Gross Reservoir, southwest of Boulder, Colorado, in October 2019. The reservoir, which supplies Denver Water customers on the Front Range, depends heavily on snowmelt. Photo by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk. Aerial support provided by LightHawk.

Click the link to read the article on The Water Desk website (Mitch Tobin):

February 4, 2026

This story was produced by The Water Desk, an independent journalism program at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. 

The American West’s snowpack is valuable for many reasons.

Snowmelt supplies much of the water flowing through the region’s streams, rivers, irrigation canals and household faucets—a vital role that has taken on new urgency this winter as much of the West struggles with scant snow cover.

Snowfall supports countless species, maintains forest health and helps keep a lid on wildfires. It even cools the planet by reflecting sunlight. 

Snowflakes also underlie the region’s multi-billion-dollar winter sports industry, fueling local economies and drawing millions of participants. In warmer months, boating and fishing depend on water that was once frozen.

Snow performs all these functions, but can its worth be calculated in dollars and cents? And how is climate change affecting that value?

Like many aspects of nature, snow is easier to monetize in some domains than others. Its ecological benefits are complex, and its aesthetic qualities are subjective: some Westerners love the ice crystals, others dread them. 

But in the economic realm, researchers have attempted to put a dollar figure on the region’s snow, and the numbers they’ve generated are huge. 

“This stuff’s worth trillions, not billions” of dollars, said snow scientist Matthew Sturm, lead author of a widely cited 2017 paper in Water Resources Research that estimated the value of the water embedded in the West’s snowpack. “I turn on the tap in the Western states—what comes out of it is mostly snow.”

The Colorado River, which supplies drinking water to tens of millions of people and irrigates vast croplands, is primarily driven by snowmelt. The river generated an estimated $1.4 trillion in annual economic activity, according to a 2014 report commissioned by Protect the Flows, a business coalition, and conducted by Arizona State University. Adjusted only for inflation—not the region’s growth—that figure was equivalent to about $1.9 trillion in 2025, underscoring the high stakes of the ongoing, contentious negotiations over how to manage the Colorado River.

For some researchers, assigning a dollar value to snow is more than an academic exercise. In an era of tightening budgets and federal cutbacks in science, economic estimates can help justify investments in monitoring and studying snow—and highlight how much is at risk as the climate warms.

“If you want society to respond, you better talk about things that are fairly immediate, right at people’s doorsteps, and are easy to explain,” said Sturm, a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute and the author of A Field Guide to Snow.

Or as Sturm’s paper puts it, “the ‘killer argument’ to the wider public that vigorous snow research is important would come by framing the argument in terms of money, something everyone understands.”

Peer-reviewed studies explicitly valuing the snowpack are rare, but some analyses have also calculated the sizable economic impact of snow sports. This winter, skiing and snowboarding in the West have been constrained not only by a lack of snowfall but also by record warmth that limited some resorts’ ability to make artificial snow. 

A 2024 report from the National Ski Areas Association concluded that downhill snow sports generate $58.9 billion in annual economic activity in the United States and support an estimated 533,000 ski and snowboard jobs nationwide. 

While the snowpack delivers tangible economic benefits—some easier to price than others—snowfall also carries real costs. Any accounting of snow’s economic impact must also reckon with the damage it causes.

Winter weather contributes to fatalities from avalanches in the mountains and from heart attacksin cities among people shoveling snow. But those deaths pale in comparison to the toll on slick roads. Each year, 24% of weather-related vehicle crashes happen on snowy, slushy or icy pavement, and 15% occur when snow or sleet is falling, according to the Federal Highway Administration. More than 1,300 people are killed and more than 116,800 are injured each year in crashes on snowy, slushy or icy pavement, the agency reports, though not all of those incidents are weather related.

The Animas River and San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado in May 2023. The snowpack serves as a natural reservoir that releases water in warmer months. Photo by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk. Aerial support provided by LightHawk.

Valuing the snowpack’s water

The 2017 paper began with a phone call that Sturm made to Michael Goldstein, a professor of finance at Babson College with whom he had previously collaborated. 

“Hey, what do you think snowpack’s worth?” Goldstein recalled Sturm asking.

Goldstein wasn’t a snow expert, but he told Sturm, “If we make some simplifying assumptions here, I could value it for you.”

“I just thought it was a cool question,” said Goldstein, who is also the Donald P. Babson Chair in Applied Investments at Babson. 

Since its publication, the study has been cited nearly 400 times, according to Google Scholar. 

Viewed through an economic lens, the snowpack’s role as a mountain water tower provided a clear value that Goldstein could quantify.

“Nature naturally stores the water for you for free. You didn’t have to build a reservoir,” Goldstein said. “If that goes away, that actually has a cost. And the cost is the replacement cost of either storing the water or getting water from a different source.”

Climate change is already having a variety of profound effects on the West’s snow, such as shrinking the snowpack season, but the study focuses on one key impact: the shift from snow to rain as temperatures rise. 

Even if total precipitation remains unchanged in the decades ahead, a transition from snow to rain—and faster melting of the snowpack—means runoff will occur earlier in the year. In much of the West, however, it may be impossible to capture all that earlier water for later use because dam managers must leave enough empty space in reservoirs to reduce the risk of catastrophic flooding.

“There is not enough reservoir storage capacity over most of the West to handle this shift in maximum runoff and so most of the ‘early water’ will be passed on to the oceans,” according to a 2005 study.

To estimate the declining value of the snowpack in a warming climate, the 2017 paper made some assumptions about the transition from snow to rain—an evolution expected to be more pronounced in warmer regions such as California and Oregon than in colder locations like the Northern Rockies. 

Examining a range of future trajectories spanning five to 100 years, the researchers assumed that half of current snowfall would fall as rain by the end of the scenario. 

For the 50% of snow that would eventually convert to rain, some of the water could be captured by existing reservoirs. But while Lake Mead and Lake Powell on the Colorado River currently have plenty of room to spare, the authors note that “virtually every report we have found on the heavily dammed water systems of the West suggests that reservoir capacity (except when immediately following drought) is maxed out.” As a result, the paper assumes that water systems would lose two-thirds of the reduced snowmelt runoff.  

“We’re losing, essentially, the storage capacity of snow—meaning in lieu of snow, we get rain,” Sturm said.

With their estimates of the amount of water lost as snow shifts to rain, the researchers could then multiply those figures by the cost of water to begin determining the decline in monetary value. The paper uses two water prices to bracket its estimates: $200 and $900 per acre-foot (an acre-foot is the volume of water needed to cover an acre of land to a depth of 12 inches, or 325,851 gallons). 

In reality, Goldstein said, the price of water would rise as supplies became scarcer. But the paper holds water prices constant over time, an assumption that yields a conservative estimate of the snowpack’s value.

This map shows the share of annual precipitation that falls as snow over land, based on data from 2000 to 2010. In the Northern Hemisphere, the area where 40% or more of precipitation falls as snow covers more than 5.8 million square miles. At its peak, snow typically blankets more than 22 million square miles of the Northern Hemisphere. Source: Drew Slater, National Snow and Ice Data Center, via Sturm et al. (2017).

Discounting the future

The price of water varies greatly across the West, so estimates of the snowpack’s value will necessarily span a broad range. But water costs aren’t the only reason it’s challenging to pin down the snowpack’s monetary worth. 

Another challenge the paper grapples with is the changing value of money over time. Even in the absence of inflation, if someone offered you $100 right now versus $100 in a year, the economically rational choice would be to take the $100 today. After all, a lot can happen in a year—and you could invest the $100 in the meantime. But what if the offer were $105 or $110 a year from now? 

To convert future benefits into today’s dollars, economists use a “discount rate” that accounts for risk and the preference for receiving payments sooner rather than later. A discount rate is “like the foreign exchange rate between consumption today and consumption tomorrow,” Goldstein said.  

The choice of the discount rate can make a big difference in how future costs or benefits are calculated, and it’s often a pivotal factor in studies of the economics of climate change. In the snowpack paper, the authors use three discount rates—1%, 3% and 6%—although they omit the 6% rate in their final valuation “because it is fairly extreme and unlikely to be correct in a water-stressed future world.” 

The higher the discount rate, the more heavily future losses are discounted, reducing the economic justification for acting today, such as acquiring new water supplies or building additional reservoirs. 

Assumptions about the discount rate, the price of water and future climate trajectories all weigh heavily on estimates of the value of the snowpack’s water. In summary, the authors conclude that about 162 million acre-feet of water is deposited as snow in Western mountains each winter. If half of that snowfall were to fall as rain in the future—and two-thirds of that water were to run off to the ocean without being captured—water systems would lose roughly 53.9 million acre-feet per year. That volume is roughly the combined storage capacity of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the nation’s two largest reservoirs.

The total replacement cost for the lost water ranged from $120 billion to $4.76 trillion, according to the 2017 study. By comparison, the federal government’s budget totaled about $3.85 trillion in fiscal year 2016.

“To date, a full financial evaluation of the importance of snow in our lives has not been made, but computations here and elsewhere indicate it is on the order of trillions of dollars,” the authors write. 

The snowpack’s importance and value vary across the West, with some watersheds more dependent on snowmelt than others. To estimate the local impacts of future snowpack losses, researchers used data from the 2017 study and another paper to create an interactive map that shows the share of water in each Western river basin derived from snow and lets users adjust key variables, including the discount rate, the price of water and the rate at which snow transitions to rain.

An interactive map shows the present value of future snowpack losses across Western river basins. Users can adjust key assumptions—including the price of water, the discount rate and the pace of the transition from snow to rain—to see how projected losses change by watershed. Map by Matthew Sturm and Ryan Bateman, based on data from Li et al. (2017) and Sturm et al. (2017).

Investing in snow science

Jessica Lundquist, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington, called the paper “interesting and unique.” Lundquist, who wasn’t an author of the study but is acknowledged for advising the researchers, said the paper not only tried to put a dollar value on the snowpack but “also was trying to put a value on the knowledge.”

“I like the paper because it was a collaboration between a snow scientist and an economist,” Lundquist said. While the estimates of the snowpack’s value are uncertain, Lundquist said the study provides a useful framework for assessing the financial implications of water management strategies. 

In a commentary on the 2017 paper, subtitled “Investments in snow pay high-dollar dividends,” Lundquist wrote that the study “puts the value of snow one thousand times higher than the estimates of snow based on tourism alone.”  

When the commentary was published, snow scientists were trying to convince NASA to launch a satellite mission to study the snowpack.

“We were often getting questions about what is the value not only of snow, but of studying snow,” Lundquist said. 

A satellite dedicated to monitoring snow never launched. But scientists continue to track the snowpack using other spacecraft, along with a suite of tools that includes aircraft, automated stations and manual measurements.

“I think we’re getting progressively better at figuring out how much snow is in the mountains,” Lundquist said. “I think we’ve made tremendous progress in the last 10 years that we can actually quantify it quite well with a number of ways.”

In other parts of the world, however, snowpack monitoring may be very limited. “A lot of what still needs to be done is in other mountain ranges, other places that don’t have these observing networks,” Lundquist said. “There’s a lot of people who depend on water from the Himalaya who just have no idea whether it’s going to be a drought year or a flood year or what is upstream at all.”

The Yampa River, upstream from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, in December 2019. The Yampa is a tributary of the Green River, which feeds into the Colorado River—the water source for tens of millions of people. Photo by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.

Recreational impact of a shrinking snowpack

Beyond supplying water, the West’s snowpack also underpins the region’s winter recreation economy.

During the 2024–25 season, U.S. ski areas recorded 61.5 million skier visits, according to the National Ski Areas Association. This winter, however, visitation across much of the West has suffered amid a widespread snow drought. 

In January, Vail Resorts, which is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, reported that visits to its mountains so far this season were down 20% compared to last season, primarily because of poor snow conditions. In the Rockies, only about 11% of the company’s terrain opened in December, when snowfall was nearly 60% below the 30-year average. 

A number of studies have examined how changes in the snowpack affect ski areas—both historically and in future projections. 

Between 1999 and 2010, the U.S. downhill ski industry lost an estimated $1.07 billion in revenue between low- and high-snowfall years, resulting in 13,000 to 27,000 fewer jobs, according to a 2012 analysis by University of New Hampshire researchers. The report was commissioned by Protect Our Winters and the Natural Resources Defense Council, two advocacy groups.

A 2024 study estimated that U.S. ski areas lost more than $5 billion from 2000 to 2019 due to fewer visits and higher snowmaking costs. Compared to the 1960-1979 period, ski seasons from 2000 to 2019 shortened by 5.5 to 7.1 days, according to a model of operations at 226 ski areas.

Looking ahead, the study projected that by the 2050s, ski seasons would shrink by 14 to 33 days under a low greenhouse gas emissions scenario and by 27 to 62 days under a high-emissions pathway. Under those scenarios, annual industry losses ranged from $657 million to $1.35 billion.

The 2024 study accounted for the added expenses of snowmaking, which requires investments in equipment and labor while also increasing water and energy use. It did not, however, include the broader ripple effects of shorter ski seasons on surrounding communities, where hotels, restaurants, bars, retailers, and gas stations depend heavily on tourists’ spending. 

A 2017 study examining future climate impacts on skiing and snowmobiling analyzed 247 winter recreation locations across the continental United States and projected how warming would shorten seasons. The authors concluded that “virtually all locations are projected to see reductions in winter recreation season lengths, exceeding 50% by 2050 and 80% in 2090 for some downhill skiing locations.” 

Those shorter seasons “could result in millions to tens of millions of foregone recreational visits annually by 2050, with an annual monetized impact of hundreds of millions of dollars,” the researchers wrote. They also noted that limiting greenhouse gas pollution “could both delay and substantially reduce adverse impacts to the winter recreation industry.”

A smaller, less reliable snowpack can also affect summertime recreation by reducing streamflows and reservoir levels that support fishing, boating and other water-based activities.

In Colorado, for example, outdoor recreation accounted for 3.2% of the state’s gross domestic product in 2023, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Boating and fishing generated $689 million in economic activity in the state, while snow-related recreation was valued at $1.56 billion—more than any other state.

Limited natural snow cover on a rainy Christmas Day in 2025 at Colorado’s Crested Butte ski area. As winters warm and precipitation increasingly falls as rain rather than snow, ski resorts face growing challenges. Photo by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.

Other benefits—and costs—of snow

The snowpack’s importance to winter recreation and the West’s water supply are among the easier values to quantify, but they’re not the only benefits snow provides.

On a global scale, one of the most valuable functions of frozen water is that it reflects far more sunlight than bare ground or open ocean. This reflectivity—a property known to scientists as albedo—helps cool the planet. 

A 2013 study examining the thawing Arctic attempted to monetize the loss of that cooling effect. The decline in Arctic snow and ice—along with increased methane emissions from melting permafrost—was estimated to cost society $7.5 trillion to $91.3 trillion from 2010 to 2100. “The frozen Arctic provides immense services to all nations by cooling the earth’s temperature—the cryosphere is an air conditioner for the planet,” the scientists wrote. 

Then again, the loss of snow could reduce some costs to society.

“There’s some side benefits,” Goldstein said. “You might not have a flood because you’re not going to have a massive runoff all at the same time. That does happen. Some things will be reduced.” 

If snow disappeared, so too would snow days that disrupt travel and hamper economic productivity. Winter road maintenance accounts for roughly 20% of state transportation department maintenance budgets, according to the Federal Highway Administration, which estimates that state and local agencies spend more than $2.3 billion annually on snow and ice control annually. 

Between 1980 and 2024, the United States experienced 24 winter storms that each caused more than $1 billion in damages, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Collectively, those disasters cost $104.2 billion and claimed 1,453 lives.

While vehicle crashes, skier visits and acre-feet of snowmelt can be quantified and priced, snow’s benefits and costs also encompass many things that are difficult—if not impossible—to calculate. 

In many ecosystems, for example, snow and snowmelt are vital for plants and animals that have their own economic value, not to mention their intrinsic worth. The 2017 snowpack study did not attempt to price these so-called ecosystem services, which include keeping forests healthy, maintaining cold-water fisheries and sustaining biological diversity. 

Even more challenging to value are the mix of emotions that snow evokes. Beauty—and misery—are in the eye of the beholder. 

“Some people want their white Christmas,” Lundquist said, “and others are like, please don’t shut down my city.”

The Colorado River, near Bond, Colorado, in December 2019. The river generated an estimated $1.4 trillion in annual economic activity, according to a 2014 report. Photo by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.
dWestwide SNOTEL basin-filled map February 6, 2026.

60 cities, water districts weigh in on #ColoradoRiver Shoshone court case — Shannon Mullane (Fresh Water News) #COriver #aridification

This historical photo shows the penstocks of the Shoshone power plant above the Colorado River. A coalition led by the Colorado River District is seeking to purchase the water rights associated with the plant. Credit: Library of Congress photo

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Shannon Mullane):

February 5, 2026

Colorado water groups want a seat at the table to weigh in on a historic Western Slope bid to purchase powerful water rights tied to a small power plant on the Colorado River.

Cities, irrigation districts, hydroelectric companies and other groups submitted filings Friday to have a say in a water court case that will decide the future of Shoshone Power Plant’s rights to access water.

The rights are old and large enough to shape how Colorado River water flows around the state. A proposed change to the legal rights has sparked concerns from big dogs in water, like Denver Water, Colorado’s oldest water utility, over possible impacts to their water supplies and a debate that continues decades of west-versus-east water fights in Colorado.

The Colorado River Water Conservation District submitted a request to the court in November to change the water rights tied to the power plant, a small facility tucked into Glenwood Canyon by Interstate 70. The water is used primarily to generate electricity, but the district wants to add an environmental use to help aquatic species during low flows or if the 117-year-old power plant a few miles east of Glenwood Springs were to shut down in the future.

Historically, groups have used opposition filings, like those made Friday, as a way to weigh in on water cases — it doesn’t necessarily mean they oppose all or any part of the proposal, the Colorado River District said.

The district declined further comment.

If the district’s bid is successful, it will end up buying the Shoshone’s water rights from an Xcel Energy subsidiary for about $99 million. The water rights would become the crown jewel of a state-led environmental preservation program and provide long-term certainty for water users across the state.

If the district cannot get court approval to change the water rights, it would scuttle the Colorado River District’s entire proposal.

Of the 60-plus parties in the case, some, like several major Front Range cities, have been concerned the water supplies for millions of people could be negatively impacted. Others filed mainly to watch or to support the effort.

At least 18 are part of a coalition that has collectively promised $37.3 million to help the river district meet the hefty price tag.

These filings came from Western Slope irrigation districts, governments and water utilities, including Grand County, Breckenridge, Clifton Water District, Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, Summit County and Glenwood Springs.

“Eagle County filed as an ‘opposer’ because that is the term that’s used in water court for parties with an interest in the outcome of the case,” according to a statement from Eagle County staff. “In this case, the county has an interest in maintaining the existing Shoshone Water Rights flow regime as described in the application for change of water rights.”

Others watched to make sure their priorities were discussed during the hearings.

“Western Resources Advocates joined the Shoshone water rights change case as part of our ongoing work to preserve and improve the natural environment in the Colorado River in Colorado,” Bart Miller, WRA’s healthy rivers director, said in an email to The Colorado Sun.

The proposed change would also help support recommended flows for endangered fish many miles downstream, he said.

Some filings came from big water players on the Front Range who fought against the Colorado River District’s proposal during a state process to approve the environmental use. These include the city of Colorado Springs, Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, the city of Aurora and the city and county of Denver.

These groups have cited concerns that changes in the water rights at Shoshone could impact their own water supplies, which are used by over 2.5 million people up and down the Front Range.

Shoshone’s oldest water right is more senior than some of the Front Range water rights, which allows it to use water first. Under Colorado water law, junior rights get cut off first in dry years.

Adding an environmental use might mean Shoshone is using water more frequently or in larger amounts than in the past, the providers argued.

Others joined to better follow the case, like the city and county of Broomfield and Southwestern Water Conservation District. The district, like the Colorado River District, was formed by the state legislature to act as stewards of water resources on the Western Slope.

“Generally we are in favor of the Shoshone water change,” Steve Wolff, SWCD general manager, said. “We’re watching … how the water right ultimately may have a role in interstate matters.”

There is a lot to be determined about the future of Shoshone’s water rights.

The Colorado River District’s plan to buy the rights comes with four stipulations: state approval to use the water to help instream flows; a successful petition in water court to change the legal rights; $99 million to pay the bill; and approval from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

The state’s water agency, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, gave its approval in November.

The court case will identify how much water could be used to benefit the environment and identify any potential ways a change could harmfully impact water flows to farmers, cities, utilities or other water users.

“From a legal perspective, this potentially could be a landmark water case,” Wolff said. “We will certainly be involved in it.”

Financing for a potential sale is still to be determined: In January 2025, the Bureau of Reclamation offered $40 million in federal funding through a program authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act. But President Donald Trump’s administration froze that funding.

If the Colorado River District gets its way in court, they’ll take it to the utilities commission for consideration. The entire process could take years to finalize.

More by Shannon Mullane

The February 6, 2026 briefing is hot off the presses from Western Water Assessment

Click the link to read the briefing on the Western Water Assessment website:

February 6, 2026 – CO, UT, WY

Continued drought conditions plagued much of the region during January. After significant regional precipitation during the first week and a half of January, dry conditions dominated, and little precipitation fell during the remainder of the month. Consequently, regional snowpack and streamflow volume forecasts are extremely low. Record low statewide snowpack conditions exist in Colorado and Utah while Wyoming statewide SWE is 84% of average, driven by wetter conditions in western and northern Wyoming. While northern Wyoming streamflows are near to above average, much below average streamflow volumes are forecasted for the remainder of the region including Lake Powell which is forecasted to receive 38% of average inflow. With Lakes Mead and Powell storage hovering just above 25%, forecasts of low Colorado River flows, and continued Post-2026 Guidelines negotiations, 2026 is certain to be a challenging year for regional water managers.

January precipitation was much below normal for the majority of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and over three-quarters of the region received less the 75% of average precipitation. Small areas of near average precipitation fell in all three states and eastern Colorado received 125-400% of average January precipitation.

Temperatures were above average across the entire region during January. January temperatures in all of Utah and Wyoming and large portions of Colorado exceeded three degrees above average. Northwestern Colorado, northeastern Utah and western Wyoming observed January temperatures that were six to twelve degrees above average.

February 1st snowpack conditions were poor across most of the region. Colorado and Utah snow water equivalent (SWE) was 55% of median at the start of February and at record low levels. Snowpack conditions in Wyoming are slightly better with 84% median SWE statewide. Western Wyoming river basins (Bighorn, Green, Snake, and Yellowstone) had near median SWE. Regional snowpack conditions generally deteriorate from north to south with the worst snowpack conditions in the Arkansas, Rio Grande, and San Juan River basins where less than 50% median SWE has accumulated. Real-time estimates of SWE based on satellite imagery suggest significantly poorer snowpack conditions compared to SNOTEL measurements of SWE. These spatial estimates of SWE often differ from SNOTEL SWE measurements because they capture SWE across the entire elevation range while SNOTEL measures SWE across a narrower elevation range. In Utah, February 1 river basin percent SWE varied from 12-54% of average; in Colorado, basin percent SWE ranged from 19-54%; and in Wyoming, basin SWE ranged from 4-110%.

Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map February 5, 2026.

Seasonal streamflow volume forecasts for river basins in Colorado, Utah and southeastern Wyoming are much below average. Near to above average seasonal streamflow volumes are forecasted for much of Wyoming. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, streamflow volume forecasts ranged from 30-92% of average and seasonal inflow volume to Lake Powell is forecasted at 38% of average (2.4 million acre-feet). The Upper Green River Basin and other northern Wyoming basins (Big Horn, Powder and Yellowstone) are forecasted to receive 92-122% of average streamflow volumes. On the Great Basin side of the Wasatch Mountains and Plateaus of Utah, streamflow volume forecasts ranged from 35% of average for the Weber Basin to 54% of average for the Six Creeks watershed in Salt Lake County. Similarly, low streamflow volume forecasts were issued for the Arkansas (63%), Noth Platte (58%) and South Platte (76%) River Basins.

Dry and warm conditions during January caused regional drought coverage to increase to 63% (54% of region on 12/30/25). Drought conditions especially deteriorated in Colorado, where moderate drought emerged in northeastern and southwestern Colorado and severe drought expanded in western Colorado. The area of extreme and exceptional drought in the Colorado River headwaters increased in area during January. Drought emerged in eastern Wyoming and severe drought expanded in the southern portion of the state.

West Drought Monitor map February 3, 2026.

As of mid-January, La Niña conditions persist in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Pacific Ocean conditions are expected to warm and there is a 69% probability of neutral conditions emerging in the next two months. Despite the forecast for warming Pacific Ocean temperatures, ocean temperatures decreased slightly in late January. NOAA monthly forecasts for February suggest an increased probability for below average precipitation across the entire region and above average temperatures for Colorado, Utah and southwestern Wyoming. On the three-month timescale, NOAA forecasts indicate an increased probability of below average precipitation in southern Colorado and southern Utah. February-April temperatures are likely to be above average in Utah and southwestern Colorado.

Significant weather event: Upper Colorado River Basin drought. The Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) began the 2026 water year with severe or extreme drought conditions covering nearly the entire watershed. Drought conditions have eased slightly, largely due to a wet October, but basin SWE is currently at 60% of median which is a record low (since 1986). If an average amount of SWE accumulates in the UCRB from February 10 to early April, then the 2026 peak SWE would remain low at 77% of average. Poor snow conditions and relatively dry soils throughout much of the UCRB have resulted in very low (38% of average) Colorado River inflow forecasts to Lake Powell. With a current Lake Powell elevation of 3,535 feet and poor Colorado River streamflow volume forecasts, low reservoir elevations will threaten Glen Canyon Dam’s ability to generate electricity by the end of 2026. The US Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-Month Study projects Lake Powell elevations two years into the future. Under the “Most Probable” scenario, Lake Powell elevation falls to 3,513 feet, just 23 feet above the elevation that the hydroelectricity-generating turbines must be shut down. Under the “Minimum Probable” scenario, reservoir elevations fall to 3,490.6 feet, just inches above the level that power generation at Glen Canyon Dam must cease. Operating Glen Canyon Dam is possible below 3,490 feet, but electrical generation must be bypassed and the alternate outlet for the dam was not engineered to run continuously. With Lakes Mead and Powell sitting at one-third and one-quarter full, only 15 million acre-feet (MAF) of combined water storage exists. However, only 6.3 MAF is available for consumption since nearly 9 MAF of water sits below the deadpool elevation of the reservoirs (Colorado River Research Group, “Dancing with Deadpool“). That means that current accessible storage in the two large reservoirs is less than one year of Lower Basin water deliveries from Lake Powell (7.5 MAF). While the UCRB has faced significant drought challenges over the last 25 years, current and forecasted conditions are taking the basin into truly unprecedented waters.