Forecasters stick to dry winter call

Experts say state got lucky with recent big storms

By Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Monday, January 14, 2008

Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky

Ruben Trinidad, left, and his brother, Jairo, shovel snow off the roof of the Old Town Inn at Crested Butte last week. Crested Butte received more than 40 inches of snow in 48 hours. Weather experts say a La Nina pattern will start to push storms farther to the north.

Forecasters are holding to their predictions of a dry winter for Colorado despite blasts of snow that have continued into mid-January and set snowpack records in the southwestern mountains.

Admitting that the string of major storms over the past six weeks caught him off guard, one top federal forecaster nonetheless said a strong La Nina effect is likely to keep the state mostly dry through March.

"I'm sticking with my forecast, except that I acknowledge I have some egg on my face," said Klaus Wolter, a meteorologist affiliated with the University of Colorado and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Wolter said his prediction applied to the January-March period, not to December - a point he said he didn't make clear enough in media interviews. Even so, he said the string of big, wet storms running through the state late last year was historic.

"I certainly can't remember in 20 years of living here anything like that," he said. "I think we should count our blessings. We got lucky."

That "moisture pipeline," Wolter said, was fueled by the so-called Pineapple Express, a weather system with its origins near the Hawaiian tropics. But, he added, it is bound to dry up.

"The writing is on the wall," he said.

Wolter, along with state climatologist Nolan Doesken, expects the La Nina pattern - a cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean - to push storm tracks farther north, away from Colorado, resulting in "a greater likelihood for warmer- and drier-than-average conditions," Doesken said.

Mountain snowfall, however, has been so significant in the past six weeks, that even with a long dry spell, Colorado will probably avoid the dangerously dry conditions that appeared to be settling across the state in late November, Doesken said in a recent summary of year-end weather.

"Going into the end of November, it was very touch and go - drought conditions were redeveloping over the eastern plains, and snowfall in the mountains was much less than average," Doesken said. "Weather patterns changed abruptly. We went from being dangerously dry and warm to being back on track for an average winter."

Nowhere was that more evident than in the southwestern mountains, which went from alarmingly dry to buried in less than a month's time, a reversal Wolter called "astounding."

And as of Saturday every basin in the state was above 100 percent of the 30-year average.

The Upper Rio Grande Basin was at 162 percent, the San Miguel Basin was at 158 percent and the Gunnison Basin was at 145 percent.

"We're into record snowpack down there," said Mike Gillespie, snow survey supervisor for the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service. Gillespie's only caveat: thorough snowpack record- keeping for that region extends only to the mid-1980s.

The record snow "is a really good scenario because even if things dry out . . . those basins will be pretty much assured of at least average snowpack," Gillespie said.

So significant is the snowfall in the state's southwestern region that Colorado now has a 70 percent chance of having a statewide snowpack average of 100 percent or better on April 1, Gillespie said. That would bode well for the spring runoff and reservoir levels.

Colorado has hit a statewide average of 100 percent or more on April 1 only twice in the last decade - 105 percent in 1998 and 107 percent in 2005, he said.

Wolter, though, cautioned not to get too caught up in the good snows of late.

It's taken unusual events to pad snowpack in recent years, he said, citing the Front Range blizzard of March 2003, the blizzards of 2006 and the recent parade of wet storms. He wonders how long that can last.

"Ever since 2000 we have just been limping along; we get these individual events," he said. "Our luck is going to run out at some point."

hartmant@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5048

• January 14, 2008

  10:59 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  MountainMan writes:

  Wolter, please keep up your predictions! Clearly the weather does the opposite of what you say it will do. So it is great news that you predict a dry spring... I can't wait for all the snow!

• January 14, 2008

  11:09 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Dan2 writes:

  No doubt. Here is the quote from MR. Wolter from The Denver Post, speaking about the forecast for the next few months (this article appeared 11/27/07)the preceding statement was 'the next few months do not look a whole lot better' in which Mr. Wolter proclaimed, "Oh it's dry and grim."

  He also stated, specifically speaking about December and January in which historically, La Nina winters produced a significant amount of moisture in the Colorado, "I don't see that happening this year, the storm tracks are shifted north."

  It is also significant to note, that anything past 5 day predictions have a woefully low rate of accuracy. In studying the last 5 years of predictions from NOAA reports, 7-10 day forecasts have an accuracy rate of less than 10%.

  Another example of someone who knows nothing spouting off about gloom and doom...

• January 14, 2008

  12:01 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Lonestar writes:

  At least we can be confident in what the global warming models tell us will happen in the next 100 years. Hardy, har, har!

• January 14, 2008

  1:45 p.m.

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  Darwin writes:

  Good points Dan2 and swoods00. Where do I sign-up for a job where I can be wrong most of the time yet make some good pay. lol