Southwest Colorado’s snowpack is lingering longer than usual in some spots, but it’s not enough to reverse the dry winter.
In an updated report on Colorado’s snowpack from the National Resource Conservation Service, the San Juan, San Miguel, Dolores and Animas river basins had shot to a median of 214 percent Wednesday. The moisture is easing drought conditions, but the data may not tell the whole story.
According to the National Weather Service, even though things are better than average for now, it still wasn’t a great winter.
“The numbers can be misleading,” said Matthew Aleksa, a meteorologist with the weather service. “It’s not like we have a lot of snow up there.”
Several stations, including at Mancos, Molas Lake and Vallecito, reported no snowpack.
Aleksa said the actual snow depth for the region this winter was only 67 percent, far below the 30-year average.
“We’re sitting higher than we should be this time of year, but it’s still pretty low overall,” he said.
The dry winter’s ripple effect will be seen throughout the Southwest. According to a Bureau of Reclamation forecast, in-flows into Lake Powell will run about 42 percent of average.
As for Southwestern Colorado, Aleksa said a cold, wet May has prolonged the snowpack a little longer than usual, and recent precipitation, some in the form of snow, has padded the numbers. The peak snowpack came in March.
At the Durango-La Plata County Airport’s weather station, sensors show 3.02 inches of precipitation for May. It’s a similar story in other parts of the state, as well. Steamboat Springs received almost 6.5 inches of moisture in May.
Last month was the wettest May in airport precipitation records dating to 2000. Before that, it appears Durango’s wettest May on record came in 1947, when 3.72 inches of precipitation fell, according to the Western Regional Climate Center.
Aleksa said a wet summer may be in store for the Durango area.
“June, July and August, we’re still going for a big bull’s-eye of above-normal precipitation,” he said. “It’s looking like a wet summer overall.”
Drought conditions have eased. All of La Plata County is now classified as in moderate drought, the second-least severe level according to the interagency U.S. Drought Monitor. Some of southern La Plata County has slipped out of “severe drought.”
For cattle ranchers, the wet spring means lower demand for hay. Federal agriculture officials expect the price of hay to drop.
In recent years, hay has been a pricey commodity as drought affected growers and ranchers in the Four Corners and in Texas.
“All of those trucks that went with hay from here to Texas, they’re not going to be doing that anymore,” said Dave James of James Ranch in Hermosa.
Most of Southwest Colorado growers had not even begun cutting hay as of last week. In northeast Colorado, hay contracts were reported at $7.50 per bale for grass and $185 for large squares of premium alfalfa, according to the Colorado Hay Report, a product of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service.
James Ranch sells directly to consumers at the Hermosa property and at the Durango Farmers Market, insulating the business from swings in beef prices. James said his family made a decision about 20 years ago to get out of the commodity market.
“It was just too big a roller coaster, so we decided to sell direct, and cut out all the middle men,” he said.
James Ranch has plenty of water from the Animas Consolidated Ditch Co. And the grass is growing just fine.
“We have an abundance of grass because of the rainfall,” James said.
cslothower@durangoherald.com, bmathis@durangoherald.com
