Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Public Radio website (Sam Brasch). Here’s an excerpt:
The old-school art of snow tracking
Metal signs mark the survey site in a patch of forest above the cabin. Once the team arrived, Mike Ardison, a hydrologic technician for the Colorado Snow Survey, unloaded a green trundle off his back, then unwrapped it to reveal sections of a hollow, aluminum tube. It extends to roughly eight feet long once he fits the pieces together…To measure the snow levels, Domonkos and Ardison work their way along the snow course, dropping the tube at a series of set points along the path. A column of snow captured inside reveals the height, then the pair hang the tube from a spring-powered milk scale to clock the weight. Digital scales might be more accurate, but Ardison said their batteries wouldn’t last long in normal winter temperatures…
Crouched over a notebook, [Brian] Domonkos punched a calculator to arrive at a figure for the site. He let out a sigh when he arrived at the final number: 2.2 inches of snow-water equivalent, less than half the previous record low measured on the same date in 1977…Other measurements taken at snow courses around April 1 were just as alarming. Out of the 64 sites in Colorado with at least 50 years of data, 60 reported either record-low snow levels or tied the lowest on record…Those results confirm 2026 as the worst year for Colorado snowpack in recorded history, said Russ Schumacher, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and Colorado’s state climatologist. A lack of historical precedent means it’s harder to fully predict the impact of such low water levels. Schumacher, however, expects reservoir levels to rapidly decline in the summer and fall. Fire risk is harder to predict, but he said major wildfires usually appear in years when the snowpack is lower and melts early.
“We’re maybe in one of these liminal spaces where you can see what’s coming, but it’s not here yet,” Schumacher said. “And, yeah, that’s a challenging situation.”
