Storm earns applause of snowpack watchers

Statewide tally goes from below average to 20 percent above

Deborah Frazier, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 22, 2006 at midnight

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The fierce winter storm that froze the metropolitan area has a silver lining - a big bonus for Colorado's snowpack and 2007 water supply.

When the flakes started flying early Wednesday, Colorado's statewide snowpack was about 3 percent below average. By Thursday afternoon, the tally had jumped to 20 percent above average.

"It's going to help," said Scott Entrekin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Boulder. "It's a very good storm for the South Platte River Basin, which supplies the metropolitan Denver area."

The snow that falls on Colorado's peaks and high mountain valleys melts in the spring to fill streams and the reservoirs that green the state's farm fields, hay meadows, lawns and parks.

So, news of a big boost to the summer's water supply may hearten the folks shoveling 4- and 5-foot drifts to clear their sidewalks or free their cars.

"When you get a lot of snow like this in the city, it doesn't always have an impact on the snow in the mountains that's our water supply for next spring and summer," said Trina McGuire-Collins of Denver Water.

"But this is very encouraging, especially considering that it's happening early in the season," she said.

While the mountains west of the Continental Divide didn't get the motherlode of snow that buried the Front Range, the South Platte Basin jumped from 109 percent of average Wednesday to 131 percent by Thursday, Entrekin said.

McGuire-Collins said that even before the storm, the mountain reservoirs were in the best shape in years, in part because customers have cut back on water use.

She also offered a cautionary note - one good storm isn't enough.

"If we have hot and dry weather later on, the outlook will change," said McGuire-Collins. "Every bit of snow we get in the mountains will help."

Entrekin said most of the state's moisture comes in March and April, but in a dry year, winds and warm weather can eat through a hefty snowpack.

"There's still a lot of winter left and a lot of the snowpack could go away real quick," he said.

Barry Wirth, spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation's regional office in Salt Lake City, said the storm did improve the headwater basins throughout the state.

The bureau controls the reservoir levels and dams that store water for use by more than a dozen states downstream of Colorado's snowpack.

"It's certainly helped, but the big piece of the storm was on the eastern side of the divide," said Wirth. "If the storm had been just a little bit further west, we would have been dancing in the streets."

It certainly will benefit Colorado's eastern plains by raising moisture in the soil, said Wirth.

"We hate to sound greedy, but we'll take it all," he said. "The people in the South Platte should be enthusiastic - once they get through shoveling their driveways."

Colorado snowpack

Expressed in percent of average

River basin Wed. Thurs.

Gunnison 100 132

Colorado 106 119

South Platte 109 131

Yampa 85 100

Arkansas 104 111

Rio Grande 90 117

San Juan 88 128

Source: USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Snowpack Survey

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