By: Ernest Gurulé
It was the storm the city, the state, the entire region had waited and hoped for. But when the sun rose on Friday morning past, everything people expected, a thick coat of white, never fully materialized. The snow came, but it was neither a thick coat nor anywhere near what was forecast. It was akin to waiting for a big Fourth of July lightshow only to get a single sparkler. A tiny one, at that.
Population centers all up and down the Front Range got what can only be called a dusting. Denver’s official measurement was 1.6 inches; Lakewood, 2.5; Aurora, a single inch of snow. The mountains, thankfully, got mea- surements that seemed close to normal. Aspen measured fifteen inches of snow; Pagosa Springs, a foot.
The lack of snow makes life more convenient for sure. But we need it. Until Friday, Denver had gone snowless for more than 230 days, the last snow was April 23rd. It might be time to worry, say weather watchers.
There is short term drought and long term drought, said Greg Heavener, a Pueblo-based government meteo- rologist. The former, he explained, is going a “matter of weeks” with no precipitation. Long term, months without seasonal precipitation, “That’s what we’re experiencing across the state.”
But snowfall is just part of the equation, said Heavener. There’s also well below normal rainfall levels combined with record summertime heat. This weather trifecta, no longer an anomaly, has impacted whole economies in Colorado, especially farming and ranching, a $47 billion slice of the state economy.
“For the past twenty years conditions in Colorado often have been dry,” said the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Bob Kjelland. “Getting through one or two dry years is a challenge. Getting through twenty is wearing.”
Because Colorado is considered a high desert region, farmers and ranchers depend on one of nature’s ‘freebies,’ the natural growth of vegetation that animals graze on. But the drought has dried up normal moisture in the soil, said Heavener. “The top couple of centimeters (of soil) are extremely dry,” he said. A lot of vegetation has simply disappeared.
While Colorado’s farmers and ranchers do what they can to conserve water and employ best practices to cope with limited precipitation, they’re also battling on another front, said Kjelland. Farm income continues to ebb downward, he said. Factors include a trade war along with a spike in seed, fertilizer and fuel costs. “Farm and ranch families are dealing with uncertain times and also are fac- ing increasing stress.”
In dry years, said Kjelland, it costs more to grow hay and corn—livestock feed. Dealing with those costs often means thinning herds. With fewer animals, meat prices rise. It’s a predictable cycle and one we’re now in. Unless there’s a change in weather patterns—more seasonal moisture—it may last awhile, he said.
Farmers and ranchers are not alone in what has become a ‘ground hog day’ weather cycle. The state’s ski industry, a business that generates nearly $5 billion to the state’s economy, is suffering. Not only is it dealing with the same lack of moisture as agriculture, but warmer tem- peratures are making it difficult to create their own snow. Across the high country, normally busy ski runs are now just open patches of dry, brown mountainside.
While last week’s snow was more than welcome, said Colorado State Climatologist Russ Schumacher, it moved the needle only a bit closer to normal. Drought conditions, he said, improved “only marginally west of the Continental Divide, not east.” The drought monitor map “looks sort of the same…pretty much all of the state is in drought.”
The extended dry period, along with a bleak forecast ahead could portend a new normal. That could mean a repeat of summers past as Colorado has been devastated by a slew of high country wildfires. The state’s three larg- est wildfires all occurred in 2020 and Colorado’s biggest blazes have been recorded just since the beginning of the new century. It should be noted that most of the fires have been man-made. But thousands of acres of dry mountain kindling provided more than enough fuel.
The Fort Collins-based Schumacher who is also on fac- ulty at Colorado State University said current meteorology is great at short term predictions, not so great looking over the horizon. “Where it’s hard to predict is one-to-five years’ time scale. There’s a lot of variability.” But, based on the most current data, “projections show continued warming… that’s the trajectory we’re on right now.”
The drought has been a mixed bag for Colorado’s reservoir system. A few, those on the western side of the Continental Divide show levels as low as 65 percent of normal. On the eastern side of the divide, things look sig- nificantly better, though not quite at capacity.
Dillon Reservoir, the city’s largest reservoir and which sits approximately seventy miles west of Denver, “is cur- rently about 78 percent full,” said Denver Water Board’s Todd Hartman. “Overall, Denver Water’s reservoir system is at about 84 percent capacity, which is also about typical for this time of year.”
Urban areas of Colorado will weather the drought bet- ter than the eastern plains, the San Luis Valley and parts of the western slope, said Kjelland. But every type of farm operation is now or soon will be affected. “Potato growers in the San Luis Valley, peach growers on the Western Slope, vegetable growers along the Front Range and cattle and sheep ranchers,” he said. As long as this latest blow from nature lingers, the pain that accompanies it also remains. “Even hope dries up over time.”
