Let’s not beat around the snowberry. If you live in Western Colorado you are likely STILL gazing up at the mountains and dreaming of the time when you can break out the old shred sticks and careen across the hills through clouds of puffy pow. It’s been a bleak winter for Colorado’s snowpack, and you are probably aware that we are staring down dry January with very little precipitation in sight. In fact, at the time of this writing, the Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) in the North Fork of the Gunnison Basin was at 57% of median for this time of year. To make matters worse, many other nearby headwater basins contain even lower numbers. It’s pretty dire out there and the time when we can say that maybe winter will show up, is soon coming to an end. Let’s take a look at the current situation and see if we can make some sense of all the fluff (or rather lack there of).
We are using the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) SNOTEL system to share measurements of snowpack, snowpack SWE, and accumulating snowfall. Curious about the SNOTEL system? (visit this WSCC post). You can check out the North Fork’s SNOTEL graph and webpage in real time by clicking HERE.
The first thing you will see on the webpage is an overall basin condition map. Red is bad, blue is good…you get the idea. Scrolling down the page will bring you to the current SWE chart that is likely familiar to you. We’ll break down the colors and lines in a moment, but if you continue to scroll down the page you will also see future projections for the basin as well as distribution of SWE by month. This is useful for making year over year comparisons, which we will do shortly. For now, scroll back up to the SWE chart and we will spend some time shoveling out the details of the current snowpack.
When looking at the current SWE chart, you’ll first notice that the horizontal axis starts on October 1st and ends on September 30th. This is known as the “water year” and is used by water managers all over the west to get a more accurate picture of water distribution across the season. This makes sense when you think about our snowpack as a “reservoir” of stored water for the summer season. Secondly, the vertical axis is labeled in inches of SWE. This is simply how much water exists in the snowpack if you melted it all down. There are a number of colorful lines crossing the graph. The bright green line is known as the snowpack median. Median is the middle number on any given day of all the numbers for that day over the past 30 years. “Median” is more accurate than “average” when comparing uneven distribution. As we all know, snow is not evenly distributed. This can sound somewhat confusing, but think of “median” as similar to “normal” over the past 30 years. The most important line on the chart is the black one. That’s our current snowpack SWE and will hopefully keep going UP over the season.
You can clearly see the four major storm events of the season. You can also clearly see where snowfall has flatlined.
The sidebar to the right of the graph allows you to select other years to compare. This will be the focus of this post since we are all wondering, is it possible for winter 2026 to make a comeback? First, let’s get our hopes up and go all the way back to 1986:
Wow. Direct your attention to the pink line. It started snowing on September 25th, dipped slightly and by November was well on its way to a record high snowpack. That must have been quite a year! Now let’s look at a record low year, 2018:
2018 is actually quite similar to our current 2026 track, but really lost momentum though December and January. February proved to be a bust and it’s not until March that precipitation really returned. Luckily, that year had a fairly wet spring and extended the runoff into mid May. People in the North Fork still remember 2018 as one of the most difficult summers for water availability. So let’s look at a couple years that are similar to 2026, but then bounced back.
Check out water year 2000. Things were looking as bad, if not worse, than our current situation. But as February was full of flakes, and as March gave way to April, the moisture piled back up and brought our snowpack to the median level. A warm May melted the new snowpack quickly, but at least it got us out of a record low year.
Then there was 1996. Also, a very late start to the season. But holy flakes, things turned around in February and made for a pretty good water year all around!
Lastly, take a look at water year 1990. Things were looking real bad all winter long. Bouncing along the record low line clear into April. But then a wet spring kept snow in the mountains and managed to bring the SWE back to median clear out in May.
As you can see, there are examples where it seemed that all hope was lost, and yet, winter still made a comeback. For an interesting read on the current winter, check out this post by OpenSnow which breaks down our current La Nina situation and hints at a return to El Nino later this winter.
The fact remains that it is unlikely that we are going to see an epic snowpack this year. In fact, only two out of the seven current projections show the North Fork SWE getting above median. However, there is still a chance that “global weirding” will fall in our favor and prove us all wrong. For now, do what you gotta do to call in the snow. Pray for snow, sacrifice a pair of old skis to Ullr, just keep the snow dances coming. Don’t give up hope.