The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Bracing for a challenging summer
By Katherine Nettles
The lack of meaningful precipitation in the Gunnison Basin this winter appears to be on track to set records—and not the happy kind. Water experts are signaling it’s time to prepare for major drought and associated environmental hazards such as wildfires, soil depletion and water supply shortages beginning this spring.
Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District (UGRWCD) officials provided an assessment of the current precipitation, snow-water equivalent (SWE) and soil moisture conditions across the Gunnison River Basin and the Upper Colorado River Basin in a work session with Gunnison County commissioners this week. They compared soil conditions and precipitation levels with both 2022 and 2018 but asserted that so far water year 2026 appears to be worse than either of the others.
UGRWCD senior program manager Beverly Richards summarized that most (88%) of Gunnison County is now in moderate drought conditions. “And 8% of the county has moved into severe drought conditions,” she said, particularly in the northern portion of the county. In the past eight weeks drought conditions have essentially degraded, and Richards predicted further degradation was likely due to current lack of precipitation.
Precip, SWE and soil
Precipitation has ranged from 0 to 50% of normal in most of the county over the past 30 days, and potential incoming precipitation in the next week could be anywhere from .1 inches to 1.5 inches in the northern part of the county with the current storm moving through. “And hopefully that is in the form of snow and not rain with the warmer temperatures we’re experiencing,” said Richards.
Precipitation accumulation for this water year (which began October 1) is at 82% of the median, and the number is elevated due to the heavy rains in October. “We haven’t seen a lot of measurable precipitation in the past couple months,” noted Richards. “We have pretty much flatlined since January 26.”
The UGRWCD had three storms each in December and January that they were able to cloud seed and those storms totaled 9.4 inches of snow water equivalent (SWE) accumulated. Cloud seeding had not yet been possible for February, however.
Richards said that SWE was especially dire. “This is where things are not looking very well at all. We’re at 61% of the median for this date,” she said. According to snow telemetry (SNOTEL) measurements, which began in 1981, the Gunnison Basin is at the lowest median level yet during the period of record (1991-2020). SWE amounts range from 3.0 inches at the Park Cone site near Taylor Reservoir to 10.7 inches at Schofield.
The basin is currently measuring at 5.4 inches of SWE overall, compared with its historic median SWE of 8.8 inches. “That is well below 2002 levels and 2018 levels,” said Richards. “And now we are below the minimum for the period of record,” she added.
Richards said 2026 has been comparable with 1976/ 1977, considered an extremely dry year. “We are tracking closely to that. It’s not looking good.”
Richards also emphasized that 2026 is very similar to the second driest year on record, 2018. “We are very close to that record as well.”
“Soil moisture conditions combined with the snowpack show that we are in pretty dry conditions for this year.”
Soil moisture maps show soil moisture per volume is currently ranging from the 30-98th percentile. “This is also a remnant of the October precipitation events, and it’s in good shape for runoff season; however, if you add in snowpack to that soil moisture and groundwater information the percentile is a lot lower,” said Richards, ranging from 2nd to 70th percentiles.
Reservoir storage is at 60% of average for the entire basin, and at 53% for the upper basin. Total Upper Colorado reservoir storage is 61% full and Lake Powell is 26% full at 6.1 million acre-feet. “It’s very concerning that Lake Powell keeps dropping,” said Richards. Inflow at Powell is 65% of average for this date, which is also trending very similarly to 2002.
“That verifies what we’re living on the ground,” reflected commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels. “Which is very, very, very dry.”
UGRWCD general manager Sonja Chavez said the district is hearing from livestock producers that they are actively looking for hay to supplement what they will be able to grow this year and possibly next. “Last year was sort of an average year and didn’t have great productivity,” she said. “The season was short as streamflow was very low, about 50 to 70% of normal.” Chavez said they are likely to put their cattle out early on grazing lands and she said they are hearing that the lack of a blanket of snow on top of fields also causes impacts on production health.
“It is going to be a bad year, you saw that we are trending below 2018 and 2002… it’s probably going to be one of the worst years on record,” Chavez cautioned. “So, our community really needs to be prepared for that. These conversations are becoming very real, especially when you look at conditions at Lake Powell. The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) in their supplemental Environmental Impact Study (EIS) study said they could reduce their releases to a minimum of six-million-acre-feet or could still release up to 7.4 million acre feet from Lake Powell which is very concerning.”
More information about the deadlocked Colorado River Compact negotiations and potential changes to operations at Lake Powell and downstream users will be included in next week’s paper.
