The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“To me this heat has been outrageous”
If you thought winter felt like spring this year, it wasn’t your imagination. This winter was warm—and by some experts’ estimations, hot. The snowpack is melting rapidly, and the advent of dust season means it could melt faster. Fortunately, early-season snowfall and last year’s conditions will help keep this summer’s water situation from becoming dire. And so far, dust hasn’t been a major concern.
A hot, dry winter
billy barr has been tracking weather and snowfall at Gothic since 1974, and he tracked 38 record high temperatures this winter. Thirty-four of those were record highs, and four were records for the highest daily low. During a typical season, barr would expect to see four or five records.
“2012 had a lot of record highs, but that was another really hot year,” he said. He noted this winter also tied the record for the warmest January and broke the record for the warmest February and March. On February 6, the temperature in Gothic reached 50 degrees Fahrenheit on the earliest date on record by a full month, and rain on March 19 was the earliest rain on record by 25 days.
Snowfall was also low, with November the only month that was above average all winter. January saw only 26.8 inches of snowfall, February brought 36.2 inches, and March had 40.6 inches.
“This winter is so exceptional, but the lack of snow is less concerning because that has to do with where weather patterns go. We don’t get it, New England does. That doesn’t cause me as much concern as the heat. To me this heat has been outrageous,” barr said.
barr emphasized that while he records what happens, he doesn’t necessarily know why it is happening or whether his observations are trends. For example, three out of the last four winters have been dry, but he can’t say with certainty it’s a trend. What he does know is that all of the record highs have happened since 2000. And this February, nine record highs occurred in a row, between February 5 and February 13.
“That seems significant,” barr said.
Snowpack and water supplies
On April 1, the Gunnison office of the USDA–National Resources Conservation Service released a snow report for the Gunnison River Basin.
Across the basin’s measurement sites, the snow depth is 68 percent of average and snow water content is 71 percent of average. There is, however, some variability across the basin.
“It does seem like we’re better off in certain areas. The east part of the Upper Gunnison Basin seems to be doing better in areas like the old Cochetopa Pass and Monarch than what’s being reported at Schofield,” said Frank Kugel, general manager for the Upper Gunnison Watershed Conservancy District. “We’re fortunate that we’re not as bad off as the southwestern part of the state or out in California.”
Kugel explained that early season snowfall held up relatively well during the winter’s warmer temperatures and the lack of dust so far this season has also helped. Weather and wind events can cause dust from the Colorado Plateau to settle on the local snowpack and cause it to melt at a faster rate.
“We’ve been fortunate to not have as many events or no significant events up until the last few days,” Kugel said.
So far, given snowpack and reservoir conditions, Kugel and other water managers hope for a decent runoff year. Taylor Park Reservoir is projected to fill, and while Blue Mesa Reservoir is not, inflow is forecast at 71 percent of normal. That’s a drop from earlier in the season, but reservoir levels are nearly average in the basin and releases from Blue Mesa to protect endangered species habitat in the Lower Gunnison are projected to be significantly less than last year.
The summer water levels are not projected to be a repeat of 2012, when parts of Blue Mesa Reservoir looked like a river. “The storage levels going into spring runoff are much closer to normal now than in 2012 when we had low reservoir levels,” Kugel said.
Dust season could be beginning
While the lack of spring dust events has been a good thing for the state of the local snowpack, plenty of the spring dust season remains. Chris Landry, executive director for the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies, says April is the biggest month for dust events and May is a close second. There was also a minor dust event April 1-2.
Based out of Silverton, Landry said, “We observed dust in the air here, and heard about blowing dust elsewhere. We haven’t been up anywhere else yet to verify that there was dust on the snow, but this was a comparatively weak, minor event that nonetheless was real.”
Landry will be in the Gunnison Valley the week of April 13 to assess valley-wide impacts. Locally, Kugel was concerned that the wind event might have deposited a fresh layer of dust on the snowpack. But a trip to Meridian Lake on Friday, April 3 eased those concerns. “The snow at Meridian Lake was relatively clean and that’s good news,” Kugel said.
That being the case, Landry believes there’s more dust to come. “[The recent event] signals that the source area is ready to emit dust given the right winds,” he said.
“We’re a long way from the end of so-called dust season and so I anticipate, given the experience of the last ten years, it seems likely that we will see more dust,” Landry continued. Given the short-term weather forecasts, there could be another dust event between now and Landry’s visit to the Gunnison Valley.
Looking toward spring
It’s difficult to say exactly what the spring will hold. Landry says predicting the dust season is a challenge because it involves weather patterns and soil conditions. “You may predict weather correctly but not realize no dust is available for wind transport because of some other weather event earlier… It boils down to watching the near-term forecast for the kind of synoptic scale pattern that we have observed over the last ten years,” Landry said.
It’s also difficult to pinpoint the benefits of snow should April and May bring heavy snows, as they have been known to do. As barr pointed out, the plethora of brown hillsides around the valley can have a big impact on snow.
“Anything can happen but once bare ground starts to show and south hillsides are bare, they start absorbing heat from the sun instead of reflecting it,” barr said, “They start to warm up, not only radiating back warm temperatures at night, but warming up so new snow starts to melt.”
So for now, perhaps Kugel’s optimism says it best: “It’s not gloom and doom yet. It’s still early, and with reservoir conditions being relatively close to average, we’re hoping to have a reasonable runoff year.”
