Despite heavy snowpack in southwestern Colorado and a cool, moist spring in parts of the Front Range, Colorado is still at risk of drought.
No, really.
“We have had some wetter weather this year,” said Assistant State Engineer Jack Byers, who heads Colorado’s drought task force. “But this average or above-average snowpack is not the end of the drought. Right now all we can say is we’ve been fortunate.”
Byers acknowledges his message will be a hard sell as warmer weather swells Colorado’s rivers and turns the dun Front Range foothills and grasslands a bright spring green.
And all agree: The winter of 2004-05 saw a startling reversal of drought conditions that have gripped much of the West since the late 1990s.
Record precipitation buried parts of the Southwest with snowpacks ranging from 150 to 200 percent of normal. In the past month, moisture relieved what looked like hard drought bearing down on the northwestern and northern Rockies.
And Colorado’s winter snows were the best since 1998.
However, Klaus Wolter, a regional climatologist with the Climate Diagnostic Center in Boulder, said the recovery is not complete.
“We certainly hit rock bottom in 2002,” Wolter said. “But this is still payback time.”
History, and climate indicators, suggest the drought’s demise is not certain.
The status of El Niño, a warming of the eastern Pacific that often helps shunt moisture into Colorado, is unclear, Wolter said.
Lingering moisture from wet winters often short-circuits the early summer heat waves necessary for the summer monsoons. The southwest monsoon is the state’s most important warm-season water-maker.
While the current drought – from which the state appears to be recovering – was severe, other droughts of the past century lasted much longer.
“The fact that we had serious impacts from a garden-variety drought should send a message to policymakers that we are at serious risk for a long-term drought,” said Roger Pielke Sr., Colorado’s state climatologist.
Nevertheless, a number of municipalities have replaced mandatory watering restrictions with voluntary ones, including the state’s largest municipal supplier, Denver Water.
That sends the wrong message to state residents, Byers said.
“So often, the minute people hear there will be no watering restrictions, drought goes right off their radar,” Byers said. “We have to bear in mind drought hasn’t gone away. The only question is whether it will return in six months or six years.”
As the state drought task force worries about the vulnerability to drought, an oncoming warm spell is expected to send a freshet of meltwater into southwestern Colorado’s streams and rivers.
In La Plata County, officials are monitoring part of the Missionary Ridge burn, where snowmelt seeping into the soil has caused a series of mudslides. In a worst-case scenario, a major slide could dam the Florida River, which provides drinking water to Durango.
“At this time, it doesn’t appear that we will end up with large-scale catastrophic failure of the slope,” said Butch Knowlton, the county’s director of emergency preparedness. “But it’s still early.”
Staff writer Theo Stein can be reached at tstein@denverpost.com or 303- 820-1657.