Still scraping ice off your driveway from December? Take heart. Barring a major spring dry spell, you should be able to water your lawn and hit the carwash this summer with a clear conscience.
The seemingly relentless snowstorms and flurries since late December have driven statewide snowpack levels to 91 percent of average. But on the eastern side of the Continental Divide, the snowpack is well over 100 percent of average – a number that sounds realistic to those Front Range residents who feel like they’ve been doing nothing but shoveling their walks since Christmas.
However, snowpack in the Yampa and White River basins of northwestern Colorado is only 83 percent of normal, so they could use more of the white stuff. As of Friday, however, 6 feet of snow had fallen on Mount Werner in Steamboat Springs in the past week, so that snowpack number will climb higher. Elsewhere on the other side of the divide, the North Platte basin is 87 percent of normal, but in southwestern Colorado snowpack is only 78 percent of average.
Still, the readings are better than they were a few years ago when Colorado was limping though a multiyear drought.
But with Colorado’s wettest months – March and April – mostly still to come, we say: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
On the other side of the divide, that is.
We’ve had quite enough over here, thank you.
