An initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder

Home Blog

In dry years, Colorado’s Crystal River runs at a trickle — but why?

The Crystal River flows past a stream gauge at the fish hatchery just south of Carbondale. This location has nearly dried up in late summer in recent years due to drought, climate change and senior water users’ upstream diversions. Photo: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

Editor’s note: This story is part of a larger project undertaken by Aspen Journalism — a nonprofit, investigative news organization — to examine water use on the Crystal River. Visit Aspen Journalism’s website to see the complete project, including narrative descriptions of how water is used on each of the river’s eight largest ditches, as well as an interactive map.

In 2012, one of the driest years in Colorado in recent memory, the Crystal River practically dried up. 

Ken Neubecker, a now-retired Colorado projects director at environmental group American Rivers and former member of the Pitkin County Healthy Rivers board, recalls the stream conditions.

“I took a photo on the Thompson Road bridge, and it was running about 1 cubic foot per second, if that,” he said. “It was mostly dry rocks with some puddles in between.” (One cfs, which is equivalent to the amount of water to fill one basketball, is a common way to measure the flow of water.)

These extremely low-water conditions returned in the drought years of 2018, 2020 and 2021, with river flows near the fish hatchery just south of Carbondale hovering around 8 to 10 cfs — not enough to support aquatic life and nowhere near the 100 cfs that the state of Colorado says is the minimum needed to maintain a healthy stream. 

Beginning high in the Elk Mountains, the Crystal River flows 40 miles through a canyon under the flanks of Mount Sopris and winds past the towns of Marble, Redstone and Carbondale before joining with the Roaring Fork River, a major tributary to the Colorado River. Along the way, its waters turn mesa hayfields, acres of alfalfa, and town parks and lawns a verdant green. 

A historic drought driven by climate change and temperatures that creep ever higher are partly to blame. But the factors that lead to a dry river bed are many and include unique geology, ill-defined legal concepts, misunderstandings about the value of water, inefficient irrigation systems and vague state guidelines regarding waste that seem to be enforced only under specific circumstances.  

These barriers to conservation are widespread across western Colorado. The Crystal River is one place where these complex issues converge, resulting in a chronic dry-up of stream sections in late summer most years. To Neubecker, the cause is water users taking more than they need and not leaving enough for downstream users — especially when the “user” is the river ecosystem itself.

“It just dries up a stretch of river and disconnects the upper part of the river from the lower part,” he said. “You have to be a good neighbor, and that concept has been totally thrown by the wayside.”

The Crystal is not unique. Rivers throughout the West face increasing pressure from chronic overuse, warming temperatures and prolonged dry spells. Persistent dry-ups that span weeks or months are a familiar feature of many so-called “working rivers” that supply water to the West’s sprawling farmlands and growing cities. 

As scarcity has gripped the states that make up the headwaters of the Colorado River, a new level of scrutiny has fallen on water uses once considered insignificant, even small hayfields or grassy front yards. Communities throughout the West are now under pressure to justify their use of any amount, and make a case for continuing to do things the way they’ve always been done.  

To better understand these issues plaguing the Crystal, Aspen Journalism examined the river’s biggest users to create the most complete picture possible of how water is used, why dry conditions persist and what can be done about it. We created a detailed analysis using publicly available information; state-of-the-art, satellite-based measurements; interviews with experts; and, where possible, site visits and ditch tours. 

Understanding exactly how the West’s water is used — and perhaps where opportunities for efficiency improvements exist — will only become more crucial in a hotter, drier future with increasing scarcity across the Colorado River basin.

Low ditch efficiencies

According to Aspen Journalism’s analysis, some of the Crystal’s biggest diverters have very low ditch efficiencies, meaning that the crops they grow are using just a small fraction of what they take from the river. 

The low efficiencies pose the question: Does the small amount of water that is actually used by the crops justify the large amounts diverted from the Crystal, to the detriment of its ecosystem?

Of the 42 active ditches on the Crystal according to the Colorado Division of Water Resources (DWR) database, Aspen Journalism examined the top eight: those with the biggest and oldest water rights, the majority of which date to the 1880s. The analysis compared how much they were taking out of the stream based on diversion records maintained by DWR and how much water was absorbed by crops. Known as evapotranspiration, this is tracked by satellites through a publicly available platform called OpenET. Evapotranspiration is a measure of the amount of water used by crops, also called consumptive use. 

Aspen Journalism’s analysis shows that Crystal River ditches that irrigate primarily agricultural land — the East Mesa, Lowline and Ella — have an average efficiency of between about 12% and 14%. That means the crops that are irrigated by these ditches use 12% to 14% of the water the ditch diverts. An outlier is the Sweet Jessup Canal, which irrigates Crystal River Ranch and whose crops use nearly 30% of the water it diverts, according to our analysis. Much of this ditch is lined or piped, making it more efficient.

For ditches that are used primarily for outdoor watering of residential lawns, gardens, ballfields and parks — ditches such as the Carbondale Ditch, the Weaver & Leonhardy, Bowles & Holland, and the Rockford, the latter of which also irrigates some agricultural land — our analysis showed lower efficiencies, ranging from less than 1% to about 9%. However, that analysis likely reflects an undercount of the amount of water consumed on smaller parcels.  

OpenET is becoming a widely used tool by water managers, including by the Upper Colorado River Commission, to calculate the water savings on individual fields that participate in its 2023 and 2024 System Conservation Program. Still, this technology has limitations. For example, the satellites work best on parcels that are at least .22 acres, so consumptive use tied to many residential lawns and gardens that are irrigated with water from these ditches is probably not included in these calculations. There is also no way to account for the amount of water a crop uses that comes from precipitation. Including that figure would result in lower ditch-efficiency percentages. For a complete explanation of how Aspen Journalism got these numbers, including all the caveats and limitations of the data, see our methodology breakdown. 

The two ditches owned and operated by the town of Carbondale — the Carbondale Ditch and the Weaver Ditch — appear to be using a particularly small percentage of the overall water they take from the river. These ditches weave through the front yards, parks and alleyways of Carbondale, contributing to the charming, small-town feel and adding a riparian ribbon of green to an arid landscape. In general, these ditches that are used by residents to water their lawns and gardens have less-consumptive use than ditches that are all or nearly all agricultural use. However, since the OpenET does not pick up small lawns and gardens, it’s hard to know exactly how much water is being consumed from these ditches.

Kevin Schorzman, public works director for the town of Carbondale, said the town does not track ditch efficiencies, consumptive use or the number of homes that use ditch water for their lawns. He said the town has undertaken several projects over the past few years that should lead to improved efficiency in the ditch system, including lining portions of the Carbondale and Weaver ditches with concrete as well as piping sections of both ditches. 

Officials have pointed to a river restoration project, which includes headgate modernization and automation on the Weaver Ditch as having benefits for the environment. But Schorzman said the project may or may not impact diversions from the river.

Inefficiencies widespread

James Heath, DWR engineer for Division 5, agreed that Aspen Journalism’s ditch-efficiency numbers, while low, looked pretty reasonable. Additionally, a 2015 consumptive-use analysis of the Colorado River basin by Wilson Water Group put the overall system efficiency for the area that includes the Crystal’s watershed at 10%, which is in line with Aspen Journalism’s findings.

Very low ditch efficiencies seem to be common throughout Division 5, which contains the headwaters of the Colorado River. The 2015 Wilson Water Group study showed efficiencies in sub-basins ranged from 10% to 31%. Two other mountainous headwaters — the Blue River and Eagle River basins — had efficiencies of 14% and 16%, respectively. 

Eric Kuhn, a Colorado River expert, author and former general manager of the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District, said the Crystal’s ditch efficiencies are in line with other places in western Colorado. He said irrigators in some basins are diverting 10 to 12 acre-feet for every acre-foot that their crops end up using. 

“Those are the numbers we kind of got used to when people looked into them in detail,” Kuhn said.

It is common knowledge that ditches must take more water than only what is needed by crops, as pointed out by Joe White, director of finance at Colorado Rocky Mountain School. The private boarding school is the largest shareholder on the Rockford Ditch, which diverts from the Crystal.

“I don’t think that should surprise anyone,” White said. “Diversions are never going to equal consumptive use. Everyone knows it takes more diversion than consumptive use to deliver water to where it needs to be applied.” 

White said Aspen Journalism’s numbers sound too low, but he did not provide his own consumptive-use numbers for the Rockford Ditch. White added that the Rockford needs to be kept full so that the lawn-watering irrigation pumps in the nearby neighborhood of Satank function properly.

“It’s challenging to regulate it as efficiently as we would like to,” he said.

Because the Crystal is not the only overtaxed stream in Colorado dealing with these issues, cities across the state are attempting to deal with water scarcity. That can be through strict conservation measures and, in particular, wringing water from nonfunctional, ornamental grass by banning its planting and incentivizing its removal. 

But so far, widespread mandatory conservation measures — cracking down on waste and implementing efficiency standards — have not been aimed at agriculture, which is by far the biggest water-use sector and potentially has some of the lowest-hanging fruit to find water savings through irrigation improvements. 

This parcel of land on Prince Creek Road is owned by Bailey Family Investment Company and is watered with Crystal River water via the Ella Ditch. The sprinkler gun system was installed in recent years. Photo: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

Reasons for low efficiencies

There could be several reasons why ditch efficiencies on the Crystal are low. The most basic is that flood irrigation is less efficient than sprinklers. About 58% of agricultural lands on the top eight ditches are flood irrigated, according to data from the state DWR. Many ditches were also built in the late 19th century and are not lined or piped, meaning that some of the diverted water is lost to leakage. 

Some of the diverted water is lost to thin, rocky soils that water percolates through quickly. Irrigators often need to divert extra water, known as “push water,” to ensure that there’s enough pressure to get the water all the way to land at the end of the ditch, which is sometimes miles from the point of diversion. These transit losses are not considered part of consumptive use and are not measured by OpenET. 

There is some evidence that soils in the area are especially rocky — the Crystal River was originally named Rock Creek — which may be contributing to low efficiency, allowing water to seep through the bottom and sides of ditches before reaching a farm field.

Heath, the division engineer, also found evidence of this from drill logs for water wells in the area. 

“They are running into some pretty coarse materials at shallow depths that would cause a lot more ditch loss, a lot more deep percolation, which would increase the losses and cause the overall system efficiencies to go down,” Heath said. “So, I think it’s pretty reasonable, the numbers you’re coming up with.”

Much of the diverted water that the crops don’t use eventually seeps back to the river over days, weeks or months, a phenomenon known as “return flows.” If the Crystal River Valley’s geology really is as porous as evidence suggests, return flows probably make it back to the river quickly, without much being stored for late-season returns. 

The problem with return flows is that they do not go back into the river at the same spot they are taken out and have a delayed return, contributing to seasonal dry-ups. And after percolating through the soil, return flows can be warm and laden with salt and other contaminants, impacting the river’s overall quality and the fish that depend on cold, clean water.

The Weaver Ditch, maintained by the Town of Carbondale, runs through downtown, turning parks and lawns green. A headgate modernization project may not result in less water diverted from the river, according to town officials. Photo: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

Is water being wasted?

Carbondale’s Schorzman said the town is adhering to state guidelines on waste and operating the ditch systems in a manner that is reasonably efficient. But pinpointing who might be wasting water in Colorado is difficult.

According to state guidelines on waste from 2017, which recently retired Colorado state engineer Kevin Rein said are still in effect, “a person shall not run through his or her ditch any greater quantity of water than is absolutely necessary for irrigation, domestic, and stock purposes to prevent the wasting and useless discharge and running away of water.”

The guidelines define waste as “diverting water when not needed for beneficial use, or running more water than is reasonably needed for application to beneficial use.” Beneficial use is defined as “the use of that amount of water that is reasonable and appropriate under reasonably efficient practices to accomplish without waste the purpose for which the appropriation is lawfully made.” 

But “reasonably efficient” is not clearly defined. And how much more water ditches should take than what’s needed by crops is also unclear. Determining whether an irrigation practice is reasonable or wasteful is subjective.

Much like the famous Supreme Court test for obscenity, Rein said water commissioners have a good idea of what waste is when they see it. DWR has not done an efficiency analysis on the Crystal ditches, and Rein said he cannot identify a threshold for “reasonable” because every system is different. 

“I don’t know whether it was intentional or not, but it’s important to our administration that it allows for judgment and for evaluation of myriad factors,” Rein said, referring to the subjective nature of the criteria.

The Rockford Ditch has the oldest water rights on the Crystal River. It irrigates some agricultural land as well as the lawns and gardens of the Colorado Rocky Mountain School and the Satank neighborhood of Carbondale. Photo: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

Divert it or lose it?

Another potential explanation for the low use numbers could be that some irrigators are overdiverting based on a misunderstanding of Colorado water law. The true value of a water right is tied to its historical consumptive use, which is how much water the crops use. However, there is an entrenched, incorrect belief that by maximizing the amount of water taken from a stream, one can increase the future value of a water right or protect it from abandonment. Many interpret Colorado’s famous “use it or lose it” doctrine as “divert it or lose it.” 

“The reality of that is sometimes it can feel like you have something on paper and giving up something you have on paper feels like you’re losing something,” said Assistant Pitkin County Attorney Laura Makar. 

According to a 2016 special report by DWR officials and experts at the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University, “use it or lose it” is commonly seen as a barrier to implementing water-conservation measures and efficiency improvements.

Users are told to divert their whole amount, “in order to preserve the water right; that is, protect it from abandonment and/or lead to the maximum value of the water right in a water right change proceeding,” the report reads. “This conclusion is based on a misapplication of the law.” 

In reality, there are two requirements for abandonment: A water right must sit dormant and unused for 10 years, and the owner must intend to abandon it. For the past 20 years, DWR has had a policy of not placing water rights that date to before the 1922 Colorado River Compact on the abandonment list, which is compiled every 10 years. This means pre-compact water rights (like many of those in the Crystal analysis) have an additional layer of protection from abandonment, even if they meet the two requirements.

Neubecker said taking more water than you can use violates one of the most sacred concepts at the heart of Colorado water law: the duty of water. The duty of water is the amount needed to grow a crop — not the maximum allowed by a decree — and varies depending on crop type and location.  

“Technically, it is against the law to take more water than you actually need regardless of what your decree says,” Neubecker said. “It’s just that neither the lawyers nor the state engineer’s office are going to enforce it.”

The Bowles & Holland Ditch, named after two of Carbondale’s earliest white European settlers, used to grow crops like potatoes. Now it mostly irrigates the lawns and golf course of River Valley Ranch. Photo: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

Low efficiencies not a problem for state officials

DWR officials don’t have a problem with inefficient ditches as long as irrigators are not wasting water. Rein said that low efficiency doesn’t mean irrigation is being done improperly. 

“I’m not aware that we have evidence of waste occurring on those systems,” Rein said.

There was, however, at least one documented instance of alleged water waste that occurred on the Crystal in recent years. In 2018, former water Commissioner Jake DeWolfe restricted how much water was flowing into the Lowine Ditch for taking more than it could put to beneficial use. Attorneys for one ditch user, Tom Bailey, complained in a letter to DWR, saying that the commissioner’s determination of waste was “ambiguous and erroneous,” and that the guidelines for waste are unlawful, claims that reflect the subjective nature of defining waste. DeWolfe declined to speak with Aspen Journalism for this story.

One of the ways water commissioners determine if waste is occurring is by looking at what is known as the “tail water,” which is where, after irrigating land, the ditch returns the water to the river. In 2018, DeWolfe said the large amount of tail water from the Lowline was an indication of waste. 

The situation on the Crystal in 2018 is indicative of how state officials manage the river. The system is complaint-driven, meaning water commissioners will usually focus their efforts on streams where a water user has placed a call or where they have heard complaints of waste from water users. If a river is not on call, if no one is reporting their neighbors for taking too much or if there are no obvious indicators such as flooding, water commissioners probably won’t scrutinize ditches for waste. In most cases, tail water is not measured.

According to Heath, since 2018, no complaints about waste in the Crystal River basin have been received and waste has not been observed by water commissioners. Therefore, curtailment of structures within the Crystal River basin for waste issues has not occurred since 2018.

Heath said that as long as irrigators aren’t taking extra water to expand their historical irrigated acreage, his office doesn’t have an issue with low ditch efficiencies.

“As long as they continue to operate as they have historically operated, I don’t see that there is a problem with the diversions they are making,” he said. “They are operating their ditches and irrigating as they always have, and it just yields a low system efficiency.” 

This section of the lower Crystal River dried up during the late summer of 2012, a drought year. The dry stretches occurred again in 2018, 2020 and 2021, with the river hovering at around just 8 cubic feet per second. Photo: Ken Neubecker

When the river is harmed

In Colorado, inefficient or wasteful practices are only considered such if they deprive another senior user of water. 

But what if the other water user being harmed is the river ecosystem itself? There are few ways to ensure that enough water stays in the river for the fish, plants and animals that depend on it.

The stretch of the Crystal River just south of Carbondale near the Colorado Parks and Wildlife fish hatchery has a tendency to dry up during the late irrigation season. The problem is worse in dry years, and the tool meant to address it is limited in what it can accomplish. 

The Colorado Water Conservation Board holds instream flow water rights on the Crystal River, which are intended to preserve the natural environment to a reasonable degree. They date to 1975 and are some of the oldest instream flow rights in the state. Although the Crystal River was here long before any humans inhabited the valley, under the cornerstone of Colorado water law known as prior appropriation — where the oldest rights, which almost always belong to agriculture and cities, get first use of the river — the instream flow rights that protect the river itself might as well have been born yesterday. 

The instream flow right is 100 cfs on the stretch of river between Avalanche Creek and its confluence with the Roaring Fork, but it is rarely met from August to October. The reason?

“It’s the senior uses in the area,” said Rob Viehl, chief of the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s stream and lake protection section. “There are a lot of large senior irrigation ditches right above the fish hatchery gauge that divert a lot of water. They are in priority, and they are legally senior to the instream flow.”

The dry stretch is immediately downstream from the diversion for the Carbondale Ditch, which can pull 42 cfs from the river.

“Carbondale definitely needs to do some ditch-efficiency work,” Neubecker said. “The town of Carbondale is the single-biggest water rights holder on the Crystal.”

Cold Mountain Rancher Bill Fales turns the headgate of the Lowline Ditch. Fales is participating in a non-diversion agreement with the Colorado Water Trust to keep more water in the Crystal River. Photo: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

Possible solutions

Much of western Colorado’s irrigation infrastructure is stuck in the 19th century. Upgrading ditches and headgates — and, in turn, making them more efficient — can be costly. 

Matt Rice, southwest regional director for environmental group American Rivers, said Aspen Journalism’s analysis points to the need to upgrade that infrastructure. And with billions of dollars in federal funding available, now is a good time for these types of projects, he said. Some of Rice’s work with American Rivers receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which also provides funding to The Water Desk for its Colorado River coverage. 

“If you need that much nonconsumptive push water to get your 11 or 7 or 9%, my sense is that there is a lot of opportunity to do things better,” Rice said. “It seems to me that infrastructure modernization on the Crystal could be a key thing to investigate.”

Colorado River environmental groups — including American Rivers, Trout Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, Pitkin County Healthy Rivers — have funded and worked on agricultural infrastructure improvement projects that claim to have multiple benefits for agriculture, the environment and recreation. The idea is that if a project makes an irrigation system more efficient, less water will need to be diverted from a river. 

But although they may improve riparian habitat or create safer passage for boats, there’s no evidence these projects result in more water left in rivers. Of all the experts Aspen Journalism interviewed for this story, none could point to a ditch infrastructure improvement project that resulted in a measurable decrease in diversions, as reflected in diversion records maintained by DWR. Simply quantifying flow needs specifically for recreation and the environment through stream-management plans has been thwarted in recent years by agricultural interests. 

The town of Carbondale and other groups have recently completed a headgate modernization project on the Weaver Ditch, which supporters say will benefit the environment. But Schorzman, Carbondale’s public works director, said in an email that the project “may or may not impact diversion amounts.”

Environmental groups say they must work with — and not against — agriculture since they are the biggest water-user sector and that building relationships is important. In that spirit, Pitkin County Healthy Rivers has earmarked tens of thousands of dollars (the exact amount the project will cost is still unclear) to fund a piping project for the East Mesa Ditch, which had a blowout from sinkholes in September. Healthy Rivers has not secured a commitment from ditch owners that there will be any benefit to river flows from the piping project, even though part of its mission is to maintain and improve the quantity of water in local streams.

“The question is: How can we stay true to our charter of maintaining streamflow while helping somebody divert water from the river?,” Pitkin County Attorney John Ely said at a September Healthy Rivers meeting. “You simply can’t preserve water in the river at all without someone you can work with and someone who holds a relatively senior water right. … You can’t solve the riddle of how to protect streamflow without working with agriculture.”

An often-heard refrain from water users is that if they leave the water in the river, it will just get picked up by the next downstream user, so they may as well divert it. That is true to a degree. But if all the water users on a system were to become more efficient, they might be able to each take less. 

And a new state law allows water users to get paid to temporarily lease water to the state’s instream flow program for five out of 10 years. The loaned water is tracked by DWR officials so that it stays in the river through the stretch where it’s needed. So far, the program is little-used — just nine projects so far statewide — and no water users on the Crystal are currently doing this type of instream flow loan. 

Carbondale ranchers Bill Fales and Marj Perry are participating in a slightly different program, a non-diversion agreement with the Colorado Water Trust designed to leave more water in the river. When river flows dwindle to less than 40 cfs, Fales will get paid to reduce his diversions from the Helms Ditch, which could result in an additional 6 cfs in the Crystal.

“Obviously we are like everybody else — we hate to see the river dry,” Fales told Aspen Journalism in 2022..

Colorado’s entrenched water law system protects those European American settlers who first put the water to beneficial use, growing crops and building cities. One hundred and forty years later, that system still reflects the values of the time that the concept of prior appropriation was invented and largely excludes water for the environment, recreation or tribal communities. But as water supplies continue to be squeezed across the Colorado River basin, that may one day change.

“Change is hard,” Makar said. “If we have a system that has been in place and working one way for a long time, it requires new education, new materials. … I think it’s worth it, and I think that the system is eventually going to require it. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.”

This story was produced in partnership with The Water Desk, an independent initiative of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. 

Aspen Journalism is a nonprofit, investigative news organization covering water, environment, social justice, history and more. Visit http://aspenjournalism.org

Reading list: great snow journalism

Parsenn Bowl at Winter Park ski area in Colorado in January 2017. Photo by Mitch Tobin.

Over the past few years, I’ve been collecting news stories and other journalism related to snow. Below are links to some of the best and most interesting work that I’ve come across, lumped into a few categories.

If you’re looking for a crash course on snow and the Western snowpack, you should check out some of this great reporting, writing, and visual storytelling.

In a 2019 piece, I took a stab at describing the subdiscipline of “water journalism,” so it should come as no surprise that I also think that “snow journalism” is a thing.

If Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain and my former employer, can hire reporters to cover Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, I think snow is also worthy of a “beat.”

The consequences of a changing snowpack—for reservoirs, farmers, cities, wildlife, wildfires, recreation, and more—have sparked tons of other stories in recent years, but in the list below, I’ve stuck to journalism directly related to the weather itself.

I’ve hyperlinked the journalists’ names so you can follow or learn more about them.

Atmospheric rivers

How climate change will make atmospheric rivers even worse. By Kasha Patel, The Washington Post, 1/12/2023, (video here).

This jet warns California of incoming atmospheric rivers. By Ian James, Los Angeles Times, 2/1/2023.

How California’s storms are projected to become more extreme with climate change. By Ian James, Los Angeles Times, 2/8/2024.

Atmospheric river storms are getting stronger, and deadlier. The race to understand them is on. By Gabrielle Canon, The Guardian, 2/11/2024.

Avalanches, flooding, and natural hazards

Mountains, Ice and Climate Change: A Recipe for Disasters. By Henry Fountain, The New York Times, 2/8/2021.

Satellites, airplanes and lasers are tracking Colorado avalanches. By Bay Stephens, The Colorado Sun, 3/1/2021.

How Breckenridge’s Peak 7 avalanche 35 years ago changed Colorado skiing. By Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun, 2/18/2022.

The Trillion-Gallon Question: What if California’s Dams Fail? By Christopher Cox, Photographs and Video by Spencer Lowell, The New York Times, 6/22/2023.

Halo created by ice crystals in the atmosphere above Copper Mountain, Colorado, in January 2023. Photo by Mitch Tobin.

Climate change and drought

Snowpack in Colorado, across the West is melting earlier than it did in the 20th century. By Lucy Haggard, The Colorado Sun, 4/6/2021.

In the West, Signs in the Snow Warn That a 20-Year Drought Will Persist and Intensify. By Bob Berwyn, Judy Fahys, Inside Climate News, 4/9/2021.

The winnowing of winter. By Heather Hansman, High Country News, 11/1/2021.

Western U.S. could become nearly snowless due to climate change. By Diana Leonard, The Washington Post, 12/3/2021.

Life Was Built Around Snow. What Happens When It Vanishes? By Ruth Fremson and Kirk Johnson, The New York Times, 10/21/2022

Pink snow is a red flag for the West’s water. By Kylie Mohr, High Country News, 11/29/2022.

Warmer winters spell trouble for snow plow business. By Mara Hoplamazian. National Public Radio, 1/20/2023.

Snow eases California drought and restores water levels but more needed. By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post, 3/4/2023, (video here).

Warming to push snowline higher in California, study finds. By Ian James, Los Angeles Times, 5/25/2023.

Study shows how warming climate is sapping the Colorado River. By Ian James, Los Angeles Times, 7/30/2023.

Climate change is a threat to Colorado’s snowpack. What does that mean for the water in your tap? By Shannon Mullane, The Colorado Sun, 1/9/2024

Washington state drinking water, hydropower at risk as Pacific Northwest snowpack shrinks. By Conrad Swanson, The Seattle Times, 2/12/2024.

Cloud seeding

Make it rain: US states embrace ‘cloud seeding’ to try to conquer drought. By Oliver Milman, The Guardian, 3/23/3021.

Utah is a leader in cloud seeding and could prove as a model for boosting a drought-stricken West’s water supplies. By Zak Podmore, The Salt Lake Tribune, 3/28/2021.

Can Cloud Seeding Help Quench the Thirst of the U.S. West? – Yale E360, By James Dinneen, Yale Environment 360, 3/3/2022.

Is cloud seeding a potential solution to Colorado’s drought? By Michael Booth, The Colorado Sun, 11/13/2022.

Data visualization

Of 21 Winter Olympic Cities, Many May Soon Be Too Warm to Host the Games – The New York Times. By Kendra Pierre-Louis and Nadja Popovich, The New York Times, 1/11/2018.

Climate change and California’s water. By Lauren Tierney and Monica Ulmanu, The Washington Post, 5/9/2018.

Compare This Snow Season to Every Winter for More Than 50 Years – The New York Times. By Francesca Paris, The New York Times, 1/26/2023.

How much snow still covers California’s mountains this July? By Abhinanda Bhattacharyya, Los Angeles Times, 7/27/2023.

Dust on snow

The Rocky Mountains Are Dusty, And It’s A Problem. By Luke Runyon, KUNC, 4/17/2018.

Dust blowing off the shrinking Great Salt Lake is eroding Wasatch snowpack and that could eventually threaten drinking water. By Brian Maffly, The Salt Lake Tribune, 12/22/2018.

Can the next generation of scientists help solve our dust on snow problem? By Aedan Hannon, The Durango Herald, 4/17/2022.

Colorado’s above-average snowpack has an enemy: Dust. By Tracy Ross, The Colorado Sun, 5/18/2023.

Dust on snow in the San Juan Mountains near Telluride, Colorado, in May 2023. Thanks to LightHawk for the aerial support. Photo by Mitch Tobin.

Skiing and winter sports

How climate change is transforming Colorado’s ski industry. By Jacy Marmaduke, The Coloradoan, 1/25/2018.

This Austrian ski resort is preparing for a snowless future – The Washington Post By Denise Hruby, The Washington Post, 2/18/2021.

How snow is made in the Beijing Olympics. By Bonnie Berkowitz and Artur Galocha, The Washington Post, 2/1/2022.

Climate change threatens $50 billion ski industry. By Kirk Siegler, National Public Radio, 3/31/2022.

Europe’s snowless ski resorts preview winter in a changing climate. By Rick Noack, The Washington Post, 1/12/2023.

Ski resorts can now make fake snow in 80 degrees. Here’s why that’s a problem. By Amudalat Ajasa, The Washington Post, 1/28/2023.

Ski Resorts Are Spending Big on Snow-Making to Keep Ahead of Climate Change. By Eric Niiler, The Wall Street Journal, 3/4/2023.

Studying the snowpack

Planes, pits & snowmobiles: how scientists get good data. By Emily Benson, High Country News, 3/6/2017.

A flurry of research illuminates snow’s foes (Winter’s winners and losers). By Emily Benson, High Country News, 3/27/2018.

When Water Is Scarce, Some Researchers Go Underground To Find Out Why. By Alex Hager, Aspen Public Radio, 3/13/2021.

Pink snow is a red flag for the West’s water. By Kylie Mohr, High Country News, 11/29/2022.

Why is it difficult to figure out how much snow will make it to the Colorado River By Alex Hager, KUNC, 3/11/2023.

See What California’s Record Snowpack Looks Like, Up Close. By Raymond Zhong, The New York Times, 4/3/2023.

Scientists use lasers to provide new Colorado snowpack data. By Shannon Mullane, The Colorado Sun, 5/9/2023.

From the air, scientists map California’s vast snowpack. By Ian James, Los Angeles Times, 5/15/2023.

Wildfires and forest health

Ski Resorts Threatened by Wildfires Prepare to Defend and Rebuild – WSJ By Jim Carlton, The Wall Street Journal, 3/19/2022.

Higher-elevation wildfires in the West are threatening water supplies – The Washington Post. By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post, 9/22/2022.

Wildfire and drought are shrinking California snowpack – Los Angeles Times, By Haley Smith, Los Angeles Times, 2/14/2023.

La Sal Mountains near Moab, Utah, in March 2023. Photo by Mitch Tobin.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

In $100 million Colorado River deal, water and power collide

The Shoshone Hydroelectric Facility sits beneath a busy stretch of Interstate 70 on Jan. 26, 2024. The Colorado River District is poised to spend $98.5 million on rights to its water in an effort to keep the Colorado River flowing for farms and cities in Western Colorado. Photo: Alex Hager/KUNC
KUNC’s Alex Hager reports from Western Colorado

Colorado’s Glenwood Canyon is as busy as it is majestic. At the base of its snowy, near-vertical walls, the narrow chasm hums with life. On one side, the Colorado River tumbles through whitewater rapids. On the other, cars and trucks whoosh by on a busy interstate.

Pinched in the middle of it all is the Shoshone Generating Station.

“It is a nondescript brown building off of I-70 that most people don’t notice when they’re driving,” said Amy Moyer, director of strategic partnerships at the Colorado River District. “But if you are in the water world, it holds the key for one of the most interesting and important water rights on the Colorado River.”

Beneath a noisy highway overpass, Moyer looked at the hydropower plant through a chain-link fence. Her group, a taxpayer-funded agency founded to keep water flowing to the cities and farms of Western Colorado, is poised to spend nearly $100 million on rights to the water that flows through the Shoshone facility.

The purchase represents the culmination of a decades-long effort to keep Shoshone’s water on the west side of Colorado’s mountains, settling the region’s long-held anxieties over competition with the water needs of the Front Range, where fast-growing cities and suburbs around Denver need more water to keep pace with development.

Even though the Shoshone water rights carry an eight-figure price tag, the new owners will leave the river virtually unchanged. The river district will buy access to Shoshone’s water from the plant operator, Xcel Energy, and lease it back as long as Xcel wants to keep producing hydropower.

Pedestrians walk across a bridge spanning the Colorado River in Grand Junction, Colo. on Jan. 25, 2024. The Colorado River District says buying the Shoshone water right will bring more predictable flows to the river’s ’15 mile reach.’ Photo: Alex Hager/KUNC

The water right is considered “non-consumptive,” meaning every drop that enters the power plant is returned to the river. The river district wants to keep it that way as long as they can and ensure the water that flows into the hydroelectric plant also flows downstream to farmers, fish and homes.

The river district is rallying the $98.5 million sum from local, state and federal agencies. The district has secured $40 million already, with deals in the works for the remainder. It’s rare for a big-money water deal to find this kind of broad approval from a diverse group of water users. But the acquisition is seen as pivotal for a wide swath of Colorado, and has been co-signed by farmers, environmental groups and local governments.

“It’s so much more than, ‘We’re going to spend $100 million to do nothing,’” Moyer said. “We’re keeping native flows in the river for so many benefits on the West Slope.”

Why Shoshone?

To understand why this unassuming power plant wields so much clout, you have to take a look at its history.

About 40 million people across seven Western states rely on the Colorado River. It supplies big cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver. It supports a multi-billion dollar agriculture industry. But it’s governed by a century-old legal document and a management system that has proven frustratingly difficult to adapt for today’s policymakers.

Core to that management system is the concept of “prior appropriation,” which means that those who were first to use water will be the last to have their water curtailed in times of shortage. It often ignores Indigenous people who were using the river’s water before white settlers ever arrived. But under the rules white settlers drew up and modern governments still use today, it means older water rights are more powerful.

Shoshone’s water right is one of the oldest and biggest in the state, giving it preemptive power over many other rights in Colorado.

Even in dry times, when cities and farms in other parts of the state feel the sting of water shortages, the Shoshone Hydroelectric Plant can send water through its turbines. And when that water exits the turbines and re-enters the Colorado River, it keeps flowing for myriad users downstream.

The Colorado River flows through the Shoshone diversion structure on Jan. 29, 2024. The diversion structure routes river water into the hydropower plant. Photo: Alex Hager/KUNC

The hydro plant itself produces relatively little energy. Its 15 megawatt capacity is only a small fraction of Xcel Energy’s total Colorado output of 13,100 megawatts. Shoshone’s capacity is enough to serve about 15,000 customers, which is less than a quarter of the population of Garfield County, where the plant is located.

But the power plant has held legal access to water from the Colorado River since 1902, and can claim seniority over the vast majority of other water owners in the state.

That kind of seniority means power and certainty for whoever owns it. And that has raised the hackles of Western Colorado water users, who worry that water users in other parts of Colorado might be interested in buying Shoshone’s water right.

Colorado’s Front Range – functionally the metro area from Fort Collins to Pueblo – only exists in its current capacity because of a complex network of canals, pipes, and tunnels cut through the mountains, carrying water against gravity to the places where it’s needed. About 80% of the state’s water falls on the west side of the mountains, but 80% of its people live on the east side.

Cities on the Front Range have been able to grow significantly over the past century, despite often having access to a finite supply of water. Their Western Colorado counterparts worry that future growth could lead those cities to spend big on more water from the West Slope and say securing Shoshone’s water blocks Eastern Colorado water users from the chance to snatch it up themselves.

Fish and farms

The Colorado River District’s plans to buy Shoshone’s water have rallied widespread support, largely because of the transfer’s widespread benefits.

Perhaps no constituency will benefit from the move as much as the one that lives in the river itself.

“Anything that results in more water in the river is good for fish,” said Dale Ryden, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Standing on the banks of the Colorado River in Grand Junction, Ryden looked out over a murky, meandering stretch of water. It’s part of the “15 mile reach,” a critical section of the river about 80 miles west of the Shoshone plant. The reach is filled partly by water exiting Shoshone’s turbines.

Ryden explained that this section of river is home to a variety of species, some of which are endangered, and some which are found nowhere else on earth besides the upper portions of the Colorado River.

Those species – with funky names like the flannelmouth sucker and the humpback chub – rely on this stretch of river for virtually every aspect of life.

“Back in the day, before there were people here and there was a lot of water and snowpack, the ’15 mile reach’ was kind of the place to be if you were an endangered Colorado pikeminnow or a razorback sucker,” Ryden said. “The adults live here, they spawn here, they feed here. It’s just a really highly-used and good section of river for the adult endangered fish.”

Fish biologist Dale Ryden holds a razorback sucker on Jan. 26, 2024. The endangered fish species lives in the Colorado River, and proponents of the Shoshone water right transfer say the fish will benefit from increased flows to a portion of its habitat. Photo: Alex Hager/KUNC

Because the fish are protected by the federal Endangered Species Act, people who use water from this section of the Colorado River are legally required to leave enough behind for fish. That means dry conditions and water shortages would force farmers and ranchers in the nearby Grand Valley to play a tricky balancing game between their own water needs and the legal protections afforded to endangered fish.

“We can’t have farming without taking care of those fish,” said Tina Bergonzini, manager of the Grand Valley Water Users Association, one of a handful of agricultural irrigation districts near Grand Junction. “They go hand in hand.”

Mesa County, which contains the Grand Valley, has an annual agricultural output of about $94 million. It’s the state’s top producer of fruits and berries, including the regionally-famous peaches from Palisade.

Bergonzini says the farmers and ranchers who contribute to that total will be able to depend on a steady water supply year after year once Shoshone’s water is guaranteed to keep flowing their way.

“I think peace of mind is the number one most important thing that it’s going to be able to bring to the Grand Valley,” she said.

The Grand Valley Water Users Association was among 21 groups that co-signed the river district’s plan to buy the Shoshone water right.

Other potential suitors

The river district describes the deal as ‘protecting’ the Shoshone water right, but hasn’t detailed who exactly they’re protecting it from. History provides more than a few examples of Front Range cities and agriculture looking West for new water supplies, but it’s unclear which diverters, exactly, would have wanted to buy Shoshone.

Denver Water, the state’s largest water utility, would have been a potential candidate to buy access to Shoshone’s water, but forfeited that opportunity in 2013 when the agency inked the “Colorado River Cooperative Agreement” along with the Colorado River District. In fact, Denver Water agreed to support the acquisition of the Shoshone water right by a West Slope entity.

Representatives from Denver Water, Aurora Water and Northern Water – which serves eight counties north and east of the Denver metro – declined to comment on the transfer of Shoshone’s water rights. A spokeswoman for Colorado Springs Utilities said the agency was “aware of the Colorado River District’s efforts to acquire the Shoshone water rights and would not oppose the transfer of those rights.”

This 1968 photo shows two large tubes, known as penstocks, which carry Colorado River water into the Shoshone hydropower facility from pipes within the canyon wall. Photo: Historic American Engineering Record/Library Of Congress

Mark Hermundstad, a retired water lawyer who helped craft the Colorado River Cooperative Agreement, said he was not aware of any particular water agency that was poised to buy the Shoshone right but that threats may have still existed. He even floated the idea that an East Coast hedge fund could theoretically attempt to buy Shoshone’s water.

“There’s always been a possibility that someone with a lot of money could come in and buy it and try to do something with it,” he said.

Following the funds, and what comes next

Almost all of the $98.5 million for the river district’s acquisition of Shoshone’s water will derive from public funds.

The vast majority of that money, about $49 million, is set to come from the federal government. The river district plans to request a chunk of money from a $4 billion pool given to the Department of the Interior in 2022 for Colorado River projects. The extraordinary infusion of federal money has so far been used to fund a number of incentive programs designed to pay water users — mostly farmers and ranchers — in exchange for reduced water use.

Twenty million dollars will come from the river district’s own coffers. The agency is funded by taxes from 15 counties in Western Colorado. In 2020, voters in those counties overwhelmingly approved a rate hike for payments to the river district, designed to bring in an extra $5 million each year.

Cattle graze in the Grand Valley on Jan. 25, 2024. Farm groups say the area’s growers will benefit from the Colorado River District’s acquisition of the Shoshone water right because it will help them have more predictability in the amount of water they can divert for farms and ranches each year. Photo: Alex Hager/KUNC

Another $20 million will come from the state of Colorado. The state’s water management arm, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, recently voted to approve that spending from its annual “water projects bill,” bringing the river district one step closer to its fundraising goals.

Besides wrangling the formidable sum, the main hurdles left for the river district concern permitting, regulation and a court hearing. Both the river district and state officials say they are optimistic that all the necessary paperwork will get stamped without issue.

“I don’t expect that there’s going to be entities or individuals that come out of the woodwork vocalizing any strong opposition to us moving forward in this way,” Lauren Ris, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, said.

Only one aspect of the transfer appears to present a potential wrinkle: the river district’s ability to own an “instream flow.” That designation refers to water that is owned but not used, in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s left in rivers and streams to “preserve the natural environment.” The state is usually the only entity allowed to own that type of water right.

In a recent Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) meeting, Phil Weiser, the state’s attorney general, pointed out that it would be unusual for the river district—rather than the state board itself—to own Shoshone’s water and keep it as an instream flow.

In an interview with KUNC, Ris pointed to a short list of other times the board made exceptions to its usual policy about instream flow ownership. Ris said the Colorado River District’s takeover of Shoshone is big and important enough that it makes sense to “think creatively” and consider adding Shoshone’s water to that list.

“The easiest way to have an instream flow water, right, is for the CWCB to outright own it and operate it,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that it’s the only way, and this is such an outlier unique situation.”

‘Long-term, permanent solutions’

The past few decades have seen the Colorado River governed by a patchwork of short-term agreements. The region’s top water policymakers have appeared reluctant to agree on more permanent measures to significantly correct a growing imbalance between supply and demand. Instead, they’ve put together temporary deals designed to stave off catastrophe at the nation’s largest reservoirs.

While the Shoshone water right transfer likely won’t change much for tense negotiations about water management between states that use the Colorado River, it’s a rare moment of durability and stability for at least one area that uses the river’s water.

“Now more than ever, there is a desire to look for long-term permanent solutions on the Colorado River,” said the Colorado River District’s Amy Moyer. “This is one that exists for Colorado.”

Across the Colorado River Basin, that imbalance and the growing harm of climate change have also compelled environmental groups to raise alarm about potential damage to ecosystems for plants and animals. Management decisions about the river’s water tend to prioritize cities and agriculture over the natural world.

Proponents of the Shoshone water right transfer say it will help push back on the harms of water shortages, at least on one stretch of the Colorado River.

“Being able to stabilize or make permanent existing rights is very helpful as we look at addressing and dealing with climate change and its impact on streams,” said Bart Miller, healthy rivers director at the conservation group Western Resource Advocates. Miller’s group receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which also supports KUNC’s Colorado River coverage.

Policymakers are struggling to make significant reductions to the amount of water used by cities and farms, and climate change means less water will enter the river system in the future. Environmental advocates say the Colorado River District’s ownership of the Shoshone water provides some insurance against those realities by adding predictability and protection to a stretch of the Colorado River.

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. It was produced in partnership with The Water Desk, an independent initiative of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. 

Why atmospheric rivers can be both harmful and helpful

An atmospheric river event in January 2017. Source: NOAA.

A version of this post originally appeared on Snow News on February 1, 2024.

The term “atmospheric river” (AR) has become common in weather stories and media coverage, but the name for these age-old events is a relative newcomer in meteorological glossaries.

Coined by scientists in the 1990s, the term’s popularity has soared in recent years as researchers, forecasters, journalists, and others have publicized the outsized role of atmospheric rivers in producing rain, snow, wind, and severe weather in the American West (and other places).

The recent atmospheric rivers that struck California illustrate why they can be both harmful and helpful. The storms not only caused deadly flooding but also gave the state’s meager snowpack a major boost. The map below shows the total liquid precipitation from February 1 to February 8.

Source: Pivotal Weather

Here’s a quick primer on ARs, why they matter, and what the future might hold for ARs as the climate warms.

What are atmospheric rivers?

These plumes of moisture are sometimes likened to “rivers in the sky” because they transport so much water vapor from the tropics toward higher latitudes. In data visualizations, like the one below, they can resemble a fire hose dousing the West Coast.

An AR is “a long, narrow, and transient corridor of strong horizontal water vapor transport that is typically associated with a low-level jet stream ahead of the cold front of an extratropical cyclone,” according to the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology.

“Atmospheric rivers are the largest ‘rivers’ of fresh water on Earth, transporting on average more than double the flow of the Amazon River.”

— American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology

When ARs are forced upward by mountains or other forces, the water vapor cools, condenses, and precipitates, as shown in the graphic below. This NOAA figure says the amount of water vapor in a strong AR “is roughly equivalent to 7.5-15 times the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River.”

Source: NOAA.

One type of AR has come to be known as the “Pineapple Express” because it taps moisture around Hawaii. The January 4 images below from the NASA Earth Observatory illustrate the connection: the top graphic depicts a measure of water vapor in the atmosphere and the bottom shows the view from a satellite.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory.

ARs are critical for the West’s water and snowpack

Whether you compare ARs to the Amazon or the Mississippi, there’s no doubt they exude wetness, so they can have far-reaching effects on the West’s water resources, for better or worse.

On average, a few AR events contribute 30% to 50% of the annual precipitation in West Coast states, according to NOAA. A 2019 paper in Geophysical Research Letters concluded that AR storm days are responsible for about one-quarter of the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and one-third of the snowpack in the Cascades of Oregon and Washington.

Even the Rocky Mountains benefit from ARs. A 2021 study in Geophysical Research Letters estimated that the snow produced by ARs accounts for 31% of the peak snow water equivalent in the Upper Colorado River Basin, where the majority of the river’s flow originates.

“Atmospheric river” is a relatively new term

ARs have been a big deal for eons—an average of about 11 are present on Earth at any time—but it wasn’t until the 21st century that the term entered into general circulation. The two graphics below, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, show the term’s growing use in news stories and peer-reviewed journal articles.

Source: CW3E.
Source: CW3E.

I took a peek at Google Ngram, which analyzes the text in books, and also found a sharp rise in the term’s use.

Source: Google Ngram Viewer.

Some experts think the analogy to a terrestrial river is inappropriate, and some think the term is “duplicative of preexisting concepts, such as the warm conveyor belt,” according to this article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Nevertheless, “atmospheric river” has jumped from peer-reviewed journals to water cooler conversations, not unlike “polar vortex,” “bomb cyclone,” and “heat dome.”

AR Scale rates severity with five categories

Just as hurricanes are classified by the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, and tornadoes are categorized by the Enhanced Fujita Scale, ARs have their own rating scale.

The AR Scale is based on two factors: the duration of the event and its “maximum vertically integrated water vapor transport,” a measure of its water content and the speed at which it’s moving. As shown in the graphic below, there are five categories, with the bottom two described as primarily beneficial.

Source: U.S. Geological Survey, adapted from Ralph et al. 2019.

One way to summarize AR forecasts is shown below in a set of maps from CW3E, which describe conditions along three locations—coastal, foothills, and inland—from January 30 to February 6.

Source: My compilation of maps from CW3E.

The forecast shows the southern Oregon coast is expected to reach Category 5, the most severe level, while other areas along the Pacific Ocean will reach Categories 3 and 4. Farther inland, conditions are expected to be less extreme, but at higher elevations, it’ll definitely be dumping.

ARs can end droughts but also cause major flooding

As noted by the AR Scale, these events can be both helpful and hazardous. On the positive side, ARs can be effective drought busters. A 2013 study in the Journal of Hydrometeorology concluded that about one-third of persistent droughts in California have been erased by AR storms, with 60% to 74% of droughts in the Pacific Northwest ending this way.

On the negative side of the ledger, ARs have been responsible for some of the worst floods on the West Coast, including nearly 90% of California’s flood damage. Even this week’s weather prompted some internet rumors that California would be subject to a “megaflood” of biblical proportions, according to this Los Angeles Times story, which noted that experts don’t think this is “the big one.”

One doomsday scenario, known as “ARkStorm,” is a deluge featuring wave after wave of ARs flooding large portions of California, displacing up to 10 million people, and causing a $1 trillion disaster. For more on this potential nightmare, check out “The Trillion-Gallon Question,” a 2023 story by Christopher Cox in The New York Times Magazine about the potential fragility of California’s water infrastructure.

And let’s not forget about the wind. “Atmospheric rivers are among the most damaging storm types in the middle latitudes, especially with regard to the hazardous wind they produce,” according to NASA. Researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory found that ARs were to blame for up to half of the most destructive windstorms over the last two decades. In a 2017 study in Nature Geoscience, scientists concluded: “Landfalling atmospheric rivers are associated with about 40–75% of extreme wind and precipitation events over 40% of the world’s coastlines. Atmospheric rivers are associated with a doubling or more of the typical wind speed compared to all storm conditions, and a 50–100% increase in the wind and precipitation values for extreme events.”

Climate change will intensify ARs

As the planet continues warming, scientists expect ARs to strengthen. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water, so climate change is projected to boost the intensity of downpours. NASA scientists predict that by the end of the 21st century, climate change will make ARs about 25% wider and longer while increasing the global frequency of AR conditions, such as heavy rain and strong winds, by around 50%.

2021 paper focused on the West concluded that for every 1C of additional warming, annual average flood damages will rise by about $1 billion. Because warming is causing the snow level to rise, atmospheric rivers are more likely to drop rain, so they may not be as helpful to the snowpack, and when rain falls on snow, that can cause huge problems with flooding and debris flows.

The odds of an ARkStorm have doubled due to climate change and “runoff in the future extreme storm scenario is 200 to 400% greater than historical values in the Sierra Nevada because of increased precipitation rates and decreased snow fraction,” according to a 2022 paper in Science Advances.

For a great overview of climate change and ARs, see this recent Washington Post story from Kasha Patel. And check out this fascinating piece from Ian James at The Los Angeles Times to learn how scientists are using a hurricane-reconnaissance jet to study ARs.

Snow News is a free multimedia newsletter that covers the science of snow and the state of the snowpack.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

What is an atmospheric river? A hydrologist explains the good and bad of these flood-prone storms and how they’re changing

A satellite image shows a powerful atmospheric river hitting the Pacific Northwest in December 2023. Darker greens are more water vapor. Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory

By Qian Cao, University of California, San Diego

A series of atmospheric rivers is bringing the threat of heavy downpours, flooding, mudslides and avalanches to the Pacific Northwest and California this week. While these storms are dreaded for the damage they can cause, they are also essential to the region’s water supply, particularly in California, as Qian Cao, a hydrologist at the University of California, San Diego, explains.

What are atmospheric rivers?

An atmospheric river is a narrow corridor or filament of concentrated water vapor transported in the atmosphere. It’s like a river in the sky that can be 1,000 miles long. On average, atmospheric rivers have about twice the regular flow of the Amazon River.

When atmospheric rivers run up against mountains or run into local atmospheric dynamics and are forced to ascend, the moisture they carry cools and condenses, so they can produce intense rainfall or snowfall.

A satellite view of atmospheric rivers.

Atmospheric rivers occur all over the world, most commonly in the mid-latitudes. They form when large-scale weather patterns align to create narrow channels, or filaments, of intense moisture transport. These start over warm water, typically tropical oceans, and are guided toward the coast by low-level jet streams ahead of cold fronts of extratropical cyclones.

Along the U.S. West Coast, the Pacific Ocean serves as the reservoir of moisture for the storm, and the mountain ranges act as barriers, which is why the western sides of the coastal ranges and Sierra Nevada see so much rain and snow.

Why are back-to-back atmospheric rivers a high flood risk?

Consecutive atmospheric rivers, known as AR families, can cause significant flooding.

The first heavy downpours saturate the ground. As consecutive storms arrive, their precipitation falls on soil that can’t absorb more water. That contributes to more runoff. Rivers and streams fill up. In the meantime, there may be snowmelt due to warm temperatures, further adding to the runoff and flood risk.

California experienced a historic run of nine consecutive atmospheric rivers in the span of three weeks in December 2022 and January 2023. The storms helped bring most reservoirs back to historical averages in 2023 after several drought years, but they also produced damaging floods and debris flows.

An animation shows filaments of water heading toward the coast.
Atmospheric rivers forming over the tropical Pacific Ocean head for the U.S. West Coast. NOAA

The cause of AR families is an active area of research. Compared with single atmospheric river events, AR families tend to be associated with lower atmospheric pressure heights across the North Pacific, higher pressure heights over the subtropics, a stronger and more zonally elongated jet stream and warmer tropical air temperatures.

Large-scale weather patterns and climate phenomena such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO, also play an important role in the generation of AR families. An active MJO shift occurred during the early 2023 events, tilting the odds toward increased atmospheric river activity over California.

A truck drives through muddy streets that fill a large section of town. People stand on one small patch of pavement not flooded.
An aerial view shows a flooded neighborhood in the community of Pajaro in central California on March 11, 2023, after a series of atmospheric rivers. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

A recent study by scientists at Stanford and the University of Florida found that storms within AR families cause three to four times more economic damage when the storms arrive back to back than they would have caused by themselves.

How important are atmospheric rivers to the West Coast’s water supply?

I’m a research hydrologist, so I focus on hydrological impacts of atmospheric rivers. Although they can lead to flood hazards, atmospheric rivers are also essential to the Western water supply. Atmospheric rivers have been responsible for ending more than a third of the region’s major droughts, including the severe California drought of 2012-16.

Atmospheric rivers provide an average of 30% to 50% of the West Coast’s annual precipitation.

They also contribute to the snowpack, which provides a significant portion of California’s year-round water supply.

In an average year, one to two extreme atmospheric rivers with snow will be the dominant contributors to the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada. Together, atmospheric rivers will contribute about 30% to 40% of an average season’s total snow accumulation there.

A dam spillway with a full reservoir behind it.
After several winter storms brought record snowfall to California’s Sierra Nevada in early 2023, Lake Oroville, California’s second-largest reservoir, was at 100% capacity. The previous year, much of the state had faced water restrictions. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

That’s why my colleagues at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, part of the University of California, San Diego, work on improving atmospheric river forecasts and predictions. Water managers need to be able to regulate reservoirs and figure out how much water they can save for the dry season while still leaving room in the reservoirs to manage flood risk from future storms.

How is global warming affecting atmospheric rivers?

As global temperatures rise in the future, we can expect more intense atmospheric rivers, leading to an increase in heavy and extreme precipitation events.

My research also shows that more atmospheric rivers are likely to occur concurrently during already wet conditions. So, the chance of extreme flooding also increases. Another study, by scientists from the University of Washington, suggests that there will be a seasonal shift to more atmospheric rivers earlier in the rainy season.

There will likely also be more year-to-year variability in the total annual precipitation, particularly in California, as a study by my colleagues at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes projects.

Qian Cao is Hydrologist at the Center For Western Weather and Water Extremes, University of California, San Diego.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Water flux and toxic wells – Water Buffs Podcast ep. 12 – Kathy James

Expand video >

On this episode of Water Buffs, we examine how drought can harm human health, specifically how dramatic fluctuations in water availability can lead to increasingly toxic water supplies.

Dr. James is an award-winning epidemiologist and engineer specializing in environmental and climate risk factors and their connection to health in vulnerable populations. She is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, one of three institutions that make up the Colorado School of Public Health.

She recently spoke to journalist Melissa Bailey for a Water Desk-supported article, “Once ‘paradise,’ parched Colorado valley grapples with arsenic in water.” The article, originally published by KFF Health News, centered around Dr. James’ community-based research projects that investigate exposure to heavy metals, in particular a rise in carcinogenic arsenic in drinking water in Colorado’s drought-stricken San Luis Valley.

Episode highlights  Click links to cue video

Kathy James, PhD, MSPH, MSCEKathy James, PhD, MSPH, MSCE
Dr. James is an epidemiologist and engineer at the Colorado School of Public Health who specializes in environmental and climate risk factors and health in vulnerable populations.
Starts at 1:05
Effects of drought on water quality
Recent research looked at drought conditions in Colorado’s San Luis Valley and how reduced water supply might result in a greater concentration of metals and contaminents in local wells.
Starts at 2:03
Study findings
A recent KFF Health News story supported by the Water Desk explored research by Dr, James finding that drought conditions have been intensifying the levels of metals in drinking water in southwestern Colorado.
Starts at 4:38
Does reduced water quantity always mean more pollution?   (7:04)
Why the San Luis Valley?
The area is one of the oldest agricultural communities in the state, with residents going back as many as eight or nine generations. It is the highest mountain plain desert in the western hemisphere and is a leading producer of potatoes, lettuce and alfalfa. It also experienced a megadrought from 2002 to 2012.
Starts at 10:47
Are metals in water a concern for crops and livestock?
There is less concern regarding metals appearing in meat and produce than in water consumed directly from contaminated wells.
Starts at 16:13
What are the health consequences of water contamination?
Arsenic contamination can lead to a number of health problems from heart, kidney and reproductive concerns to cognitive developmental problems.
Starts at 19:44
Water Words: Hard waterWater Words: “Hard Water”
The “hardness” of water can be traced to its level of dissolved calcium and magnesium. Hard water can be harmful to piping and household appliances but can be beneficial to ecosystems.
Starts at 25:31
Thoughts on media imagery of drought
Do representations of water scarcity seem too apocalyptic?
Starts at 28:49
How can people keep healthy and safe?
With research partners at ASU, Dr. James is exploring low-cost and environmentally low-impact filtration systems for removing harmful substances from well water.
Starts at 36:07
Is well testing too expensive?
Currently, private well owners are responsible for the cost of testing. More important, says Dr. James, is helping them address problems that the tests find.
Starts at 40:00
Are water quality concerns affecting mental health as well?   (44:49)
Should governments mandate more testing?   (48:13)
Show more episode detail

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts

You’re welcome to watch the video version of Water Buffs here on our website or subscribe to it on our YouTube and Vimeo Channels. If you prefer your podcasts on audio or on a portable device, subscribe using one of the services below or grab the feed url for your own service.

Ways to get the audio version: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Soundcloud | Stitcher | Podcast RSS Feed

 

Share your thoughts – and consider joining us

If you’re interested in appearing on the show, please contact Water Desk Director Mitch Tobin at mitchtobin@colorado.edu. If you’d like to share your comments and questions, you can reach us at waterdesk@colorado.edu, or on Twitter and Facebook.

Podcast article css and js

Helpful sites for tracking snow and the (subpar) snowpack

Snowmaking at Purgatory ski area in southwest Colorado in December. A dry, warm start to winter left many ski resorts in the West with thin cover. Photo by Mitch Tobin.

A version of this post originally appeared on Snow News on January 4, 2024.

There’s no shortage of websites with maps and graphics visualizing snow forecasts and the state of the snowpack.

In fact, information overload is the real challenge.

Starting up Snow News, I felt like a skier in whiteout conditions, trying to find my bearings through foggy goggles in a dense cloud of data, models, analytics, predictions, and other weather wonkery.

Lift 9 at Colorado’s Loveland ski area climbing to nearly 13,000 feet and the Continental Divide in March 2015. Photo by Mitch Tobin.

In an earlier post, I explained how the Winter Storm Severity Index provides an accessible overview of expected impacts from snow, ice, and wind. But that’s just one of many products from the government, universities, and other sources that offer a wealth of information about what’s happening with both near-term weather and seasonal trends.

Below, I describe some of the other sites I find most useful for tracking storms and keeping tabs on the snowpack. I’m not a snow scientist, so I’m focusing on resources that make it easy for a lay audience to catch the drift.

The sites below are all free, but there are also paid services worth looking into if you’re a total snow nerd. In my opinion, OpenSnow is by far the best source for snow forecasts, especially for skiers and snowboarders, and I’ve been a paid member for a decade (its wildfire smoke projections and other maps are also useful in summer). If you want to see tons of data and the output from weather models, WeatherBELL Analytics and Pivotal Weather are good choices.

1) Use iMap to visualize SNOTEL data

First, the bad news. Three months into the water year, which starts October 1, the West’s snowpack remains significantly below average in nearly every watershed. The image below is from the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s iMap interactive, which illustrates January 1 data from automated SNOTEL stations and other sources.

Source: Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The iMap tool provides a great overview of conditions in the West and lets you see data for individual watersheds or SNOTEL stations. In the images below, I’ve shown that switching from basins to stations allows you to click on a specific SNOTEL site to chart how the snowpack has fared this season. For example, the Columbus Basin station, located at 10,781 feet in the La Plata Range near me, is at 49% of the median level for 1991-2020, with current conditions shown with a black line and the median in green.

Source: Natural Resources Conservation Service.

At this station, the snowpack has flatlined recently, and with 104 days to go until the median peak date of April 15, it was at the 7th percentile. Ugh. On the bright side, the forecast calls for snow to fall around here tonight, with a bigger storm expected to hit on Sunday.

If you’re monitoring conditions in California, check out that state’s own snowpack website. The summary below from the California Department of Water Resources visualizes the grim picture in the Sierra Nevada, with the statewide average at 25%.

Source: California Department of Water Resources.

2) Explore forecasts with a map from The New York Times

One of my favorite sites for tracking incoming storms is an interactive map from The New York Times that excels at visualizing data from the National Weather Service’s National Digital Forecast Database. For example, the November 30 map below shows the “most likely” snow amounts in Utah’s Wasatch Range, but the map can also depict the low- and high-end chances so you can get your hopes up or down, depending on your personal preference.

Source: The New York Times.

It’s easy to navigate this tool and drill down to see how the snow forecast can vary dramatically across just a few miles in the West’s undulating topography. This data viz also generates probabilistic snowfall forecasts for specific locations and zip codes, using National Weather Service data to calculate the likelihood that a place will receive a specific amount of snow, such as less than one inch, four to six inches, greater than 18 inches, etc.

3) Track snowfall with NOHRSC

It’s a mouthful, but NOAA’s National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center is an essential source for snow data. NOHRSC’s interactive map offers a variety of snow-related data, including depth, temperature, density, and melting. You can also select data for any day since 2002. Below is an example of the snowfall during 72 hours in mid-December in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.

Source: NOHRSC’s National Gridded Snowfall Analysis.

As is common with federal websites, this interactive map is kinda clunky and cumbersome. The paid sites I mentioned above use NOHRSC’s data to produce more user-friendly maps, like the one below from WeatherBELL Analytics showing how much snow fell from October 1 to January 1.

Source: WeatherBELL Analytics.

4) Keep tabs on the outlook at the Climate Prediction Center

The truth is that modern science has very little skill in predicting where and how much it’ll snow many weeks or months from now. But as I’ve noted in an earlier post, there are products by federal forecasters and other reputable sources that take a stab at long-term outlooks.

I think the best source is the federal government’s Climate Prediction Center. For what it’s worth, below are the CPC’s most recent outlooks for precipitation and drought in the first three months of 2024.

Source: Climate Prediction Center.
Source: Climate Prediction Center.

5) Gauge the probability of snow at the Weather Prediction Center

My favorite feature of this site is the map that depicts the probability of snowfall exceeding certain thresholds. For example, the December 1 image below shows the odds of at least four inches of snow falling over the subsequent 72 hours.

Source: Weather Prediction Center.

See this page for WPC’s winter weather forecasts, which go out to seven days and also address freezing rain.

6) See local reports from the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS)

CoCoRaHS is a citizen-science effort that describes itself as “a unique, non-profit, community-based network of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds working together to measure and map precipitation (rain, hail and snow).”

Measurements from volunteers are plotted on an interactive map that has data available back to 1998. The image below shows 24-hour snowfall around Durango and Pagosa Springs on November 25.

Source: CoCoRaHS.

As you’d expect, big cities have a lot more observations than rural areas. See this page for more about the project and how to sign up as a volunteer.

7) Check conditions using avalanche centers

In many parts of the West, local avalanche information centers provide critical data and insights about snowfall and the status of the snowpack. Forecasting avalanche danger lies beyond the scope of this newsletter, but even if you never plan to set foot in the backcountry, these sites are still super helpful. For example, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center has weather forecastsdata from weather stations, and daily snowfall reports.

Below is the output from one of their weather models, showing the expected snowfall during a late October storm.

See this page on avalanche.org for links to other avalanche centers, and this map for a national overview of conditions.

8) Consult dashboards that pull from multiple sources

Finally, several helpful websites aggregate data, maps, and graphics from various sources, offering a quick overview of what’s happening with snowfall and the snowpack.

The Intermountain West Ski Dashboard, created by the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University, pulls together data on recent snowfall, short-term forecasts, weather hazards, snow depth, drought, and more. Here’s an example of a graphic showing that the vast majority of SNOTEL sites in Colorado were below the 50th percentile on January 1, with the vertical axis showing elevation and the different colors corresponding to different river basins:

Snow water equivalent at Colorado SNOTEL sites on January 1. Source: Colorado Climate Center.

Below is a forecast for the next seven days, showing the expected precipitation “anomaly,” with green indicating wetter than average conditions and brown showing drier (this map shows inches of liquid precipitation, rather than snow amounts).

Source: Colorado Climate Center.

The Intermountain West Climate Dashboard, created by the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado Boulder, is another useful round-up that focuses on Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. This is a great source for maps depicting recent temperature/precipitation data; measures of drought and soil moisture; current and forecasted streamflow; reservoir storage; and the status of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The site offers regular briefings on climate trends and significant weather events, including a helpful annual summary of the preceding water year. Below is a gallery of some images showing precipitation, soil moisture, and reservoir storage.

Snow News is a free multimedia newsletter that covers the science of snow and the state of the snowpack.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Staying safe with the Winter Storm Severity Index

Snow building up on a roof at Colorado’s Loveland ski area in January 2017. Photo by Mitch Tobin.

A version of this post originally appeared on Snow News on December 12, 2023.

When snow is incoming, I turn to the Winter Storm Severity Index (WSSI).

WSSI is a helpful, pragmatic, and relatively new forecast product that’s meant to communicate weather-related risks to the general public and illustrate the threat that snow, ice, and wind pose for transportation, infrastructure, homes, and businesses.

Created by the Weather Prediction Center (WPC), part of the National Weather Service, WSSI is designed to convey the “societal impacts” of winter weather. Epic snowstorms not only make for fun powder days but also can kill and injure people while disrupting life across an entire region.

While winter storms usually can’t compete with flooding, tropical cyclones, and other severe storms in terms of the havoc they wreak, it’s worth remembering that damages sometimes exceed $1 billion.

Source: Fifth National Climate Assessment.

WSSI “highlights regions and localities with the forecasted potential of damaging and life-threatening effects brought on by winter weather,” according to a helpful story map from WPC. The effects include “tree damage, school closures, transportation issues like flight cancellations, traffic accidents, and road closures.”

To get a sense of the potential problems, check out this November story from the Los Angeles Times about last year’s catastrophic winter, which left some residents with “PTSD for snow.”

“For weeks last winter, many San Bernardino Mountains residents remained trapped in their homes, buried under as much as 12 feet of snow, some without power for as long as six days,” according to the story. “Almost 350 residences and businesses were damaged or destroyed — including one of the area’s largest grocery stores, whose roof collapsed, and several houses that exploded because of buried gas meters. An estimated $143 million in losses to private property was tallied.” 

Below is an example of a WSSI map that I snagged on November 30 while the Pacific Northwest was getting pounded by an atmospheric river.

Source: WSSI.

The index has five categories, as shown in the legend below, ranging from the ho-hum “winter weather area” to “extreme impacts” where driving may be impossible and the public is urged not to travel. At this level—a sort of nivean DEFCON 1 but not quite an impending nuclear winter—the storm may disrupt infrastructure, knock out power, and produce life-threatening conditions.

Source: WSSI.

WSSI’s goal is to create easy-to-understand visuals that translate wonky weather forecasts into something that ordinary citizens can quickly grasp.

“Meteorologists may produce an accurate forecast, but the public will not take appropriate action unless there is successful communication between both parties,” WPC says. “Visuals are just as important as verbal communication when conveying hazards, which is where the WSSI product becomes an effective tool for weather personnel.” Here’s a video explaining the basics:

WSSI components

The WSSI maps show impacts over the next 72 hours, and for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 of a storm.

The index is based on six equally weighted components:

1) Snow amount: This component depends on both the amount and rate of snowfall while also accounting for local conditions and the social dimension. “Those areas of the country less accustomed to snowfall will be less prepared to deal with snow, resulting in higher levels of impacts than the same amount of snow in a snowier part of the country,” WPC says.

2) Snow load: This forecast is calculated using snow water equivalent, a measure of snow’s liquid content. “This component is significant because the weight of the snow creates a threat to the structural integrity of residential and commercial buildings, as well as tree and powerline damage,” WPC notes.

3) Blowing snow: This component is calculated by combining snowfall, maximum wind gusts, and the snow-to-liquid ratio, a measure of the snow’s density and susceptibility to fly around. Blowing snow, which you’ll typically find in open areas rather than in a dense forest, can wreck visibility and create whiteout conditions. “It takes just under 20 mph of wind to start to move snow around,” according to WPC.

4) Ground blizzard: This component is similar to blowing snow since it highlights places where visibility issues may impact transportation, but the measure is based on winds mobilizing pre-existing snow, rather than flakes falling from the sky. In fact, you can experience a ground blizzard even when the sun is shining. A blizzard, by the way, requires sustained or frequent gusts to at least 35 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

5) Flash freeze: It sounds like a method for producing TV dinners in a factory, but flash freezing is unappetizing because it can create the dreaded black ice, a transparent glaze on a road that can be treacherous since it’s so hard to detect while driving. “Flash freeze occurs when the air temperature starts above freezing, then falls below freezing in a short period of time, and there is remnant moisture/precipitation occurring at the same time,” WPC says. Bridges and overpasses are hot spots for black ice because cold air flows underneath the roadway and lowers its temperature, hence all the warning signs. Bridges and overpasses also are susceptible to black ice because they’re usually made of concrete and steel, which don’t retain heat as well as asphalt.

6) Ice accumulation: This element is based on the forecast for ice and maximum wind gusts. Ice storms can cause “tree damage, transportation shutdowns and utility problems,” according to WPC. To that list, I might add the vast number of people who take a tumble on the ice. At least in Denver, where I used to live, you could theoretically be fined $150 by the city if you didn’t clear your sidewalk in a timely manner.

WSSI versus other forecasts

The WSSI website lets you see the overall threat or check the severity of each of the six components. Although WSSI is a great way to gauge a storm’s punch, the National Weather Service says that it should be used in conjunction with the more familiar watches, advisories, and warnings issued by the agency, adding that WSSI “does not account for conditions that have occurred prior to the creation time.”

Winter storm watches are a heads-up issued “when hazardous winter storm conditions are possible within the next 3 to 4 days, but the timing, intensity, or occurrence may still be uncertain,” according to my local forecast office in Grand Junction.

The criteria for issuing winter storm advisories and warnings vary across the nation, and even within a single forecast office’s geographic purview. For example, the Grand Junction office covers Colorado’s Western Slope and Eastern Utah, which ranges from 14ers down to the red rock country of the Colorado Plateau—more than 10,000 feet in elevation difference. Here’s how the Grand Junction office handles winter storm warnings and advisories in different areas:

Source: National Weather Service.

I’m all about fun in the snow and shredding the gnar, but winter weather can also make for a costly, deadly disaster. Statistically, driving to and from the trailhead or ski resort can be one of the most dangerous parts of the day. WSSI is a useful tool for forecasting a storm’s strength and making risk/reward calculations.

Learn more

Snow buries a vehicle in the parking lot at Purgatory ski area on February 23, 2022. Photo by Mitch Tobin.

Snow News is a free multimedia newsletter that covers the science of snow and the state of the snowpack.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

What to watch on the Colorado River in 2024

2023’s above average snowpack gave a boost to Lake Powell’s dwindling water levels, and provided water managers more time to contemplate long-term policy changes. Photo: Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk with aerial support from LightHawk

After years of dry conditions throughout the West, 2023 gave the region’s water managers the greatest gift of all: a hefty snowpack. 

This year’s winter snow eventually melted and boosted the Colorado River’s beleaguered reservoirs. The Hail Mary winter storms came just in time. Without the savior snows, the river’s second-largest reservoir, Lake Powell, was on a glide path toward losing the ability to produce hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam, not to mention the harm to the long-term ecological health of the river and its main tributaries.

But the more nightmarish scenarios of quiet turbines, empty reservoirs, and dry river beds were put on hold this past year, as more snow also means more time. When wet weather returned to the basin, the river’s top negotiators quickly turned their attention away from the short-term emergency in front of them, and toward a more long-term set of solutions. Talk of not “squandering” the gift of time became a standard talking point of decision-makers along the river that supplies more than 40 million people across seven U.S. states, 30 tribal nations and communities in northern Mexico. 

One snowy year does not make for a lasting fix for the Colorado River’s fundamental gap between water supply and demand. A new year means new uncertainties over the river’s future. And as it looks now, 2024 promises to be more consequential than the last. 

Here at The Water Desk, these are the top things we’re paying attention to in 2024:

1. Reimagining how we manage the Colorado River

The snowy respite in 2023 gave both federal and state-level water managers the brain space to think long-term. A set of 2007 guidelines for the river’s management expire in 2026. In October, the federal Bureau of Reclamation released its preliminary report on what should be included in the talks to renegotiate them. They’ve given the various users — states, tribes, environmental and recreation groups — until March 2024 to submit their preferred plans for analysis and eventual inclusion in a draft set of guidelines later this year.   

The current guidelines have quite a few detractors across the river’s Upper and Lower Basins. And what should or shouldn’t be in the new rules has contributed to significant tension among river negotiators.   

The various state leaders recently got the chance to publicly posture at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference, held annually in December in Las Vegas. All seven state-level negotiators, including representatives from California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, sat beside each other on stage and made clear there was still distance between their positions on the big-picture problems plaguing the river and how to deal with them. The Arizona Republic’s Brandon Loomis has this excellent recap of what went down.

Leaders from California water agencies and districts signed funding agreements with federal officials at the 2023 Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas. Photo: Luke Runyon/The Water Desk

The panel’s biggest news was a public commitment from the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada to address what’s known as the structural deficit. This is the well-documented supply and demand gap that would exist even without climate change sapping snowpack and runoff. The deficit is estimated to be between 1.2 and 1.5 million acre-feet annually, and it has contributed greatly to the dwindling water levels at Lakes Mead and Powell. Who has to take the necessary cuts to account for that amount of water has always been an open question. Now, we have an answer: the Lower Basin states. 

“That makes sense. That’s our responsibility,” said J.B. Hamby, California’s river negotiator, at the Vegas gathering. “This is a historic thing coming. It’s on our shoulders to be able to resolve it.”

But in a basin that in recent months has grown increasingly reliant on injections of federal cash to incentivize temporary conservation deals, how state leaders plan to find the funds and the political will to permanently deal with the structural deficit will be something to watch. Any commitments made by those state-level negotiators will need to be sold to a broad range of constituents, who at this point will expect to be handsomely compensated for a permanent cut to their supplies, as POLITICO’s Annie Snider explained in this November piece.

An additional layer of basinwide tension can be summed up in one word: equity. It’s thrown around a lot in discussions of the Colorado River and the economic and social sacrifices needed to bring it onto a more sustainable path. Who should bear the greatest burden of the eventual cutbacks is still unclear. Upper Basin leaders, from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, often point the finger toward the Lower Basin. 

“We’re not interested in striking a deal that allows the continuation of depleting the storage and dragging the system into crisis,” said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top river negotiator. Mitchell made clear she felt users in her state were already feeling pain, while those downstream of the large reservoirs have mostly been made whole, even in the driest of years. But with Lower Basin users willing to take on big, intractable issues like the structural deficit, moving forward it will likely be more difficult for Upper Basin leaders to continue to cast all the blame downstream. 

One more idea from the Las Vegas conference that’s still largely conceptual, but is gaining some interest from those in power, is to use annual measures of basic hydrology — like snowpack levels and streamflows — to determine how much water ends up being delivered to the basin’s varied users. It sounds simple: only use what nature provides. 

But that idea flies in the face of the river’s foundational governing document, the Colorado River Compact, which put fixed volumes of water use on paper, regardless of whether it was a dry or wet year. For now, the idea seems to be more of a talking point than a specific policy proposal, and we will see if proponents can turn it into something Lower Basin users can get behind. 

2. Tribal inclusion in policymaking

In recent years, the Colorado River’s 30 federally recognized tribes have grown their influence in the basin’s political landscape. Calls for a more formal tribal role in basinwide negotiations are being amplified by the tribes themselves, and by both state and federal leaders, such as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. 

2023 presented some significant tribal successes. The Gila River Indian Community became a key player in negotiations over the Lower Basin’s conservation plan to secure federal dollars last spring. Federal officials promised the tribe $150 million over three years to leave water they were legally entitled to in Lake Mead. 

The Gila River Indian Reservation established its historic right to Gila River water. Since most of the Gila River is dry, the tribe uses Central Arizona Project water and groundwater sent through elaborate canals to service the reservation. Photo: Ted Wood/The Water Desk

But in the long-term, deciding what that tribal role, or tribal seat at the negotiating table, could be and should be is unsettled. In June, at a Colorado River symposium at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Getches-Wilkinson Center, Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis called for leaders from all 30 sovereign tribes to be included in talks between federal and state officials. That idea received immediate pushback from state leaders on the feasibility of expanding the table by 30 seats. 

Creating a single representative seat for all of the tribes is another option. But that, too, presents challenges. Is it fair or feasible to reduce the varied economies, cultures, geographies and spiritual practices of 30 sovereign nations into a single seat? 

While basinwide tribal inclusion still happens in an ad hoc rather than institutional way, a draft agreement to formalize a governing relationship among six tribes and the four Upper Basin states has taken shape. The Upper Colorado River Commission has started inviting representatives from six Upper Basin tribes to participate in regular meetings. Commissioners could formalize the new agreement this February, as The Colorado Sun’s Shannon Mullane recently reported.

There appears to be broad agreement that more formally including tribes in the river’s complex, multi-layered decision-making processes is the most just path to take. Deciding what type of basinwide governance structure will make tribal inclusion more than a talking point could make some progress in 2024 as the basin’s leaders say they finally have the brain space to take on longer-term issues, as KUNC’s Alex Hager reported in his piece from the Las Vegas conference

3. Winter snowpack can make or break

Snowpack in the southern Rockies entered 2024 with a weak start. There is still a lot of winter left to go, but beginning a new year with a significant snowpack deficit always brings a certain amount of hand-wringing from skiers and water managers alike.  

Upper Basin snowpack stands at just 64% of the long-term median. The snowiest months are still to come, but it’s much harder to get to an above-average snowpack after a slow start. 

2023 was a stark example of what a wet winter can do. The sense of urgency among the river’s policymakers diminished as the snow piled high. Headlines turned from documenting record lows at the big Colorado River reservoirs, to cheering modest gains in water levels. 

A heavy snowpack across the Colorado River basin in 2023 came after years of meager runoff and resulted in modest gains to water levels at the river’s two largest reservoirs. Photo: Luke Runyon/The Water Desk

The past year’s heavy snows and subsequent rushing rivers came after three successive meager runoff seasons. The gains were significant, but not a total game-changer. As scientists often note, it takes multiple consecutive years of wet conditions to allow large reservoirs like Lakes Mead and Powell to fully recover. 

The return of El Niño tipped the scales toward a warmer and wetter winter in the Colorado River basin’s headwaters states. So far, we’ve just been getting the warm, not the wet. No matter how you look at it, we’re having a dry start to winter, as my Water Desk colleague Mitch Tobin lays out in his latest Snow News post

In 2023, Lower Colorado River leaders said their deal to conserve up to 3 million acre-feet between now and 2026 was enough to bring needed stability to the river’s reservoirs. But that same point was used to justify agreements like the Drought Contingency Plans in 2019 and the 500+ Plan in 2021, which did not provide the long-term stability and certainty that water managers crave. 

Scientists, such as Colorado State University’s Brad Udall, say we haven’t been imaginative enough in envisioning just how bad things could get along the river. Another series of dry winters, the likes of which we’ve seen in the past 25 years, is plausible. 

2023 brought a reprieve. How the winter of 2024 will play out is still unclear. Its outcome will undoubtedly have ripple effects, and either amplify or ease the existing tensions playing out across the basin. 

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Billions in federal assistance after New Mexico’s largest wildfire. But little money to repair streams.

The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire will affect the Gallinas River for years to come. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue | November 16, 2023

LAS VEGAS, New Mexico – Patrick Gutierrez and Nick Maurer, who work for Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance, scramble up Canyon del Rancho, an ephemeral stream in the mountains of northern New Mexico. It’s just before noon in late August, a day after the area’s biggest rain from the summer monsoon.

Packed with soft, pliable mud, the stream bed is blanketed with evidence of the deluge. Pine needles cling to tree branches, hip high, like clothes pins. Grasses in the channel bend to the ground, pointing downstream in the direction of the flow.

Water Desk Grantee Publication

This story was supported by the Water Desk’s grants program.

Learn more about our grants for journalists

Read more grantee stories »

Gutierrez and Maurer are inspecting the stability of water-calming structures they installed in recent weeks in this section of Canyon del Rancho, part of the Gallinas River watershed. The drainage was damaged last year in the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history. The question for the moment: Had the gusher dislodged them? 

Both men are relieved by what they see. “It’s still there,” Gutierrez says, pointing at a stack of logs strung across the channel. These log mats are designed to blunt the destructive power of large volumes of water moving at high speed. In a post-fire landscape — one shorn of trees and with deep-cut stream channels — water moves in a torrent after a rainstorm. Without vegetation, streams become “peaky,” meaning a lot of water arrives at once. Those surges carry debilitating force.

Maurer, eyeing a baffle just upstream, marvels at the power of the stream flow that the weekend cloudburst unleashed. “I’m surprised that thing held, with that much water coming down,” he says.

The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire burned 341,735 acres of public and private land in the mountains above Las Vegas. The fire and the subsequent floods chewed through the Gallinas River watershed, which is the city’s drinking water source. The fire so injured the lands and creeks that feed the Gallinas River that Las Vegas needs $140 million in new facilities to treat water that is now heavy with sediment.

Turbid water from the Gallinas and other streams in the 530-square-mile burn scar also clogged and damaged the canals of local irrigation collectives called acequias. Some farmers have gone two seasons without irrigation water, according to Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association. “That way of life has been completely disrupted by the disasters,” she said.

The city and the field — both depend on high-quality water. Yet the on-the-ground work to rehabilitate the streams that provide that high-quality water has been neglected and under-funded in the post-fire recovery, according to interviews with people involved in the response. The forests are being reseeded and mulched, which will help hold soil in place. Dead trees are being removed. 

But there’s a profound disconnect in the resources available to calm the erosive power of streams. Money and labor do not match the overwhelming need for repair. 

The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire began on April 6, 2022, due to a colossal government agency miscalculation. The U.S. Forest Service was setting small fires that day below the craggy eastern face of Hermit’s Peak. The intention was to thin an overgrown forest and reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in an area that hadn’t burned in more than a century.

That was not the outcome. Dry tinder and shifting winds propelled the prescribed fire beyond its containment lines. Three weeks later a dormant fire in nearby Calf Canyon reawakened. The combined inferno burned for more than four months until it was put out in late August.

Owing to the federal government’s responsibility in starting the fire, Congress last year passed the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act, which provides $3.95 billion to compensate property owners for fire damage and to construct a new water treatment plant to handle higher sediment levels and recycle drinking water. 

With a full-time staff of four and two part-time, Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance, or HPWA, is one of several small organizations trying to make the watershed whole again. Lea Knutson, HPWA’s founder and executive director, sees the billions going to compensate property owners and laments that more is not available for streams. “There’s so much money out there,” Knutson said. “It’s not that easy to get. I mean, every week I hear of another source, and try to go for that source. And there’s always some obstacle for either a nonprofit getting it, or it going into river restoration.” 

Damage to the forest and watershed was immediately apparent and worsened by the heavy rains of the Southwest’s summer monsoon. Downpours scoured bare hillslopes and turned rivers black. Fast-moving water flexed its might. Creeks cut through their beds like buzz saws. Knutson said the worst were incised four to five feet.

The streams carried debris that blocked some 90 acequias, according to Garcia. The acequias, at risk of repeated floods coming down the mountains, are still being dug out and rebuilt.

“It’s going to be a lifetime of work to heal these watersheds,” she reflected. She added: “Watershed restoration is so important. Our future depends on it.”

The Gallinas River, which arises from the slopes near Hermit’s Peak, is a focal point of the recovery. The river is the drinking water source for 17,000 people in and around Las Vegas. In the summer of 2022 the river was so overloaded with sediment that the treatment plant couldn’t function. At one point, the city had just 21 days of water in storage that met drinking water standards and could be delivered to residents. A concerted conservation campaign kept the city from running dry until sediment levels in the river diminished.

“The watershed is our water system,” Maria Gilvarry, director of the Las Vegas Utility Department, said. “So the more of the watershed that burns, the more that impacts our ability to treat and provide water.”

Patrick Gutierrez of Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance explains the organization’s work to restore streams that were damaged following the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

Barriers to restoration

Landowners, if they apply for a claim under the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act, can use the FEMA-administered funds to cover the cost of repairs to streams and forests on their property. Such piecemeal action, however, is less effective than a holistic watershed plan, said Reid Whittlesey, stream restoration director for Rio Grande Return, another nonprofit working in the burn scar.

FEMA also oversees an aid program to rehabilitate public infrastructure assets like roads and bridges after a disaster. But where does this leave streams? Garcia said they are the “glaring omission” in the fire recovery system. “It’s hard to do that collective work, when [streams] are not part of public infrastructure,” she said.

One problem is scale. The resources for stream recovery do not match the need. Dollars are required but pennies are being offered. Few grant programs are directed at stream restoration. A go-to funding source is the New Mexico Environment Department, but it is limited. The department’s Section 319 grant program receives about $2.3 million annually from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that can be used for watershed restoration activities statewide. The state-run River Stewardship Program offers an equivalent amount for water quality and habitat protection. It will see a boost starting next year with an annual allocation from the new Land of Enchantment Legacy Fund.

The federal Natural Resources Conservation operates the Emergency Watershed Protection program, but Elias Gnann, the state conservation engineer, said it is focused on protecting life and property, not necessarily stream restoration. That program has paid out $125 million in the burn scar area for seeding, mulching, sediment and debris removal, and flood protection. A second NRCS program — Watershed and Flood Operations — might consider stream restoration, Gnann said. But it is in the early planning stages of what could be a 10-year process.

Knutson offers an example of the funding mismatch. Earlier this year, HPWA reconnected a three-quarter mile segment of the Gallinas River to its floodplain, a move that will calm the river during high flows and allow it to spread out, reducing its velocity. That project cost about $500,000, she said. Using it as a baseline, Knutson did a back-of-the-envelope calculation for FEMA to estimate stream restoration costs across the entire burn scar. The total: more than $1 billion.

Other groups acknowledge that their projects can reach only so far.

“In a post-fire recovery scenario these days the fires are so enormous, that the scale that we’re able to treat is completely a drop in the bucket,” said Whittlesey of Rio Grande Return. The organization is working with a three-year, $500,000 grant from the New Mexico Environment Department.

Even if more dollars were available, the contracts might need to be reworked, said Shantini Ramakrishnan of the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute. Watershed recovery takes a decade or more, yet most grants extend only a couple years. The risk is that the work starts and stops. “We don’t fund long-term recovery very well,” she said.

Changing this funding structure to account for the long-tail of post-fire damage is one of the recommendations of the federal Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, a group of more than 50 national and regional fire experts tasked by Congress to recommend policy solutions to the wildfire crisis. The commission also suggested expanding existing forest programs to make watershed restoration an eligible category for funding.

Then there is the matter of labor. Everyone interviewed for this article said that New Mexico lacks stream restoration contractors. Only a handful work in the state, and they are booked.

“There are capacity issues at every level,” said Alan Klatt of the New Mexico Environment Department. 

Several local programs are attempting to address the labor deficit. The New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute is collaborating with Luna Community College on a restoration training center. Knutson of HPWA draws workers from New Mexico Highlands University and the Youth Conservation Corps and is seeking an economic development grant for worker training.

Once all those variables fall into place — funding, labor, contracts — restoration workers still need access to streams. In many cases in the burn scar, that means private lands.

Isaac Leyba stands in front of Beaver Creek, which runs along his property. “In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen anything like the flooding last year,” he said. Monsoon rains in the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon burn scar sent torrents of water through the creeks. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

Recruiting landowners

Canyon del Rancho, one of HPWA’s restoration sites, connects with Beaver Creek at the property of Isaac Leyba. Just a mile downstream, Beaver Creek meets the Gallinas River, which then flows to Las Vegas.

Leyba, a playful soul, has lived at this intersection of forest and stream for 30 years. He likes to pan for gold. “I’ve found a few specks,” he said, pulling a Native-brand cigarette from a carton in his shirt pocket and lighting it.

Restoring streams in the burn scar means HPWA has to work with hundreds of landowners like Leyba. Some 57 percent of the fire burned on private lands.

As the climate warms, especially in a drying region, enabling streams and floodplains to hold water in the high country is a net benefit to the river system as a whole, explained Whittlesey. Peaky hydrographs need to be flattened. “In the desert southwest, we need to retain as much water as possible on the landscape,” he said.

HPWA’s work with ephemeral streams is low-tech and conducted by hand. Most materials used in its projects — rocks, logs, dirt — are found on or near the site. HPWA and like-minded stream restoration outfits such as Rio Grande Return take their inspiration from beavers. Three principles prevail: slow the water down, spread it out, let it sink into the ground. Rills shouldn’t erode to become gullies. Streams should connect to floodplains. They work high in the watershed, starting from the foundational creeks that give rise to the larger rivers.

Gutierrez and Maurer know many of the people who live in the Gallinas watershed. Cultivating those relationships is a huge part of the job, they said. Without working on private lands, stream restoration in the burn scar would be patchwork and incomplete.

Leyba, for one, welcomes the ecological interventions. He watched the fire remake the watershed. Trout disappeared from the creek, he said. After every rain a fresh plug of sediment fills the channels. A three-foot diameter culvert at the end of Canyon del Rancho that was clear before the fire is now half-buried with fine-grain deposits.

“Water, you cannot stop it,” Leyba said. “It’s going to continue.”

Leyba thanked Gutierrez and Maurer for their help with the channel modifications. “These guys worked their tails off,” he said gratefully. “I hope people recognize what they did.”

The western sky took on a bruised color, darkening over the mountains above. Thunder echoed in the narrow valley. A monsoon storm was building.

Gutierrez started his vehicle and Maurer rode shotgun. They drove back toward Las Vegas, away from the clouds.

“I wonder if Lori got her hot tub yet,” Maurer mused as they passed a cluster of homes.

In the high country thunder snapped again. Within an hour the rain began.

Read the first story in this two-part series: New Mexico’s largest fire wrecked this city’s water source

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Recent stories