SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — Spring is a season of extremes in Colorado — swinging from snowy days that resemble winter, to sunny stretches where shorts are required.
The change of seasons means Coloradans must begin saying goodbye to their beloved weekend activities, like skiing or snowboarding. Keystone was one of a handful of ski resorts that closed for the season on Sunday.
"I wanted to get here and give it one proper goodbye for the closing day, but looks like that's not going to happen," said Stephen Fucik, who arrived at Keystone after the lift stopped running. "But as I say, there's always next year."
However, this time of year has water experts wondering what the snowpack levels will mean for runoff into the Colorado River, a critical resource.
"Right now is exactly when we start being concerned about what our runoff is going to look like," said James Eklund, who is a Western water lawyer. "It's starting to get warmer, and so all that snow that everybody skied on and snowboarded on over the winter is going to start melting off and go into our rivers and our reservoirs."
Seven states are part of the Colorado River Basin. The Upper Basin includes Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, while the Lower Basin encompasses Arizona, California and Nevada. The Colorado River also provides water to two states in Mexico and is a crucial resource for 30 Tribal Nations. Forty percent of the water in Colorado is supplied by the Colorado River.
"Right now, we're showing about 67% of average runoff, and that's really remarkable, because our snowpack is right around 100% of average," Eklund explained. "Even though we've got pretty good precipitation, and we did have really good skiing conditions in many parts of the state over much of the ski season, it's not translating to as much runoff as we had hoped."
Sixty-seven percent of average runoff is "not where you want to be," according to Eklund, who considers this to be a "below average year."
"We're going in the wrong direction any year like this, and that's not good," said Eklund.
Eklund said the conditions in Colorado are indicative of a La Niña pattern, which typically results in more moisture for the northern half of the state with a drier southern half.
"It's the best of times, and it was the worst of times this year for our hydrology and our snowpack," said Eklund.
No matter the snowpack levels, Eklund said sublimation is becoming more common — creating another challenge for the Colorado River.
"When it's hot, windy and dry, you have sublimation," Eklund explained. "That means that snowpack that we would love to just melt off gradually and hit the river and do all the work that we want it to do when it's in its liquid state, never really goes into that liquid state. It just goes right up into the atmosphere, and we lose the ability to benefit from that."
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Eklund said sublimation has worsened over the years because of climate change.
"The two largest reservoirs in our nation sit below Colorado — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — but in the Colorado River, they are the big keystones for the way that system operates and how well it functions. And they are both very, very low," said Eklund. "They drop lower in years like this, when we don't have the amount of flow in the Colorado River to recharge those reservoirs, to recover from the really bad years that we've had over the last 25 years... We need some really good years to bail us out on the inflow into those reservoirs. Years like this are not those years. In fact, they're starting to dig the hole a little bit more deeply again, and that is a problem."
According to Eklund, runoff would need to be at 100% in order to begin mending the damage that's been done.
"The problem is becoming tougher to deal with and more acute, and it's just necessary for us to really start to scrutinize our uses and our operations and policy, because they're not working," Eklund continued. "If the the hole gets deeper every time we're below average on stream flow, then we are really not going to solve this problem, and we're going to be in a situation where we have to potentially curtail water... That's a very draconian thing to do. It's a very disruptive and impactful thing to do. And it constitutes, it really represents failure at the policy level, if it comes to that."
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