Early winter dry conditions persist across the county

UGRWCD working on lidar, gap radar and drought contingency plans

By Katherine Nettles

Parts of Gunnison County are still experiencing dry conditions as a mild start to winter with warmer temperatures and relatively little snow affects overall snow water equivalence (SWE) and subsequent soil conditions underneath. Meanwhile efforts to improve weather forecasting and snow studies continue on several fronts across the Gunnison River basin. 

Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District (UGRWCD) manager Sonja Chavez and Program Manager Beverly Richards updated Gunnison County commissioners earlier this month about airborne lidar flights, gap radar efforts and current precipitation and water supply concerns.

Water supply, management update 

Richards reported that the drought monitor showed 82% of Gunnison County was experiencing abnormally dry to drought conditions as of December 5. “This was the 30th driest November in our 129-year record, and 57th driest year to date in the county,” she said.

The three-month forecast is that drought will continue in parts of Gunnison County, and in those areas to the south and west.

Precipitation in the county has ranged in the last 30 days from 25-150% of normal, she said. “And there is not much change expected to that in the next month or so.”

OpenSnow forecasters currently predict that the next chance for more significant snow will occur from January 4 through 6 and January 8 through 10.

The Upper Taylor, Butte and Park Cone snow telemetry (SNOTEL) sites are registering above 100%, but the Slumgullion site shows below average snowpack. 

Blue Mesa Reservoir will be at 70% of average for the winter, and Taylor Reservoir is at 71%. The total Upper Colorado is at 70%, “Which is really good compared to the past few years, however Lake Powell is still at only 13%,” said Richards.

She reported that cloud seeding began in the valley on November 1, with lower basin states contributing about half the costs for the remote generators at Irwin and Black Mesa in addition to a few manual operations in other locations. As of December 12, two storms had been seeded for a total of 70.75 hours and 2.2 inches of SWE accumulated. 

Forecasting

Chavez said she is still working to put together a local partnership for airborne snow observatory flights. “This is using lidar radar to measure the depth of the snowpack to tell us how much water content there is within it,” she explained. The cost, which is $150,000 to $175,000 per flight, will be a challenge for the coming year as Chavez said she has heard from the U.S. Geological Survey and Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) that they don’t have funding in 2024, but that they will have funding to provide for it in 2025. For 2024, Chavez said she will be scrambling to get the flights using tentative state contributions of about $129,000. “We’ll see what we can get done on that,” she said. 

Chavez reported that the conversation continues around finishing the gap weather radar installation on Big Mesa south of Blue Mesa Reservoir, which would be coming from Western States Water Partnership (WSWP), and would improve local weather forecasting, data collection and cloud seeding operations. She said she connected the WSWP nonprofit with the Colorado River Water Conservation Board and staff to try working together. The radar was scheduled to be installed last spring, but Chavez said they still need to find $150,000 to $200,000 in funding to support the project.

She said there is an effort to fundraise about $70,000 more for phase two of the harmful algae bloom study at Blue Mesa Reservoir. The UGRWCD has contributed $35,000 and Chavez said they are also asking the Colorado River District for support to get the study finished and published. 

Chavez said as far as watershed management planning, staff is developing a projects list that includes work on the East River, Lake Fork and Ohio Creek. 

Chavez noted that the state’s drought task force proposal has several items that might be of interest to commissioners as they could affect Gunnison County directly. She said she would also hope commissioner chair Jonathan Houck will bring the topics and recommendations to the local drought contingency planning task force. “It will very deeply inform what we choose to work on in that plan.”

Chavez said the UGRWCD just submitted its plan to the BOR on how to move forward with a drought plan, and the BOR will be reaching out to Gunnison County commissioners for their input sometime in January on water concerns, challenges and successes. “We then anticipate moving on to a broad stakeholder input process probably in February,” she said.