March delivers welcome snow

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

Winter finally arrived in Colorado in March, bringing much-needed moisture to the foothills and eastern plains. The month's snowfall also added to a healthy snowpack in the northern mountains.

March brought Fort Collins' moisture for the year just about up to average. Average through March is 2.22 inches, and this year's moisture is up to 2.08 inches. For the month of March, Fort Collins was just above average, with 1.45 inches.

The campus weather station recorded 15 inches of snowfall in March, more than the entire rest of the winter. The total year-to-date was 27 inches, still well below the average of 49 inches for this time of year.

"We've had nice, wet snow, with lots of water content, and it's taken away the immediate wildfire danger," said Nolan Doesken, assistant state climatologist. The melting snow will also green up the grass, helping further reduce fire danger. Several wildfires occurred along the Front Range in February because of extremely dry conditions.

Mountain snowpack also improved in March. The north part of the state "has had a really good year," said hydrologist Joe Messina of the Department of Agriculture. February was dry, but by the end of March snowpacks were above average. The Yampa/White River Basin in northwest Colorado stood at 113 percent of average, while the South Platte was at 110 percent and the Colorado River Basin was at 111 percent.

March storms made a significant difference to snow-starved southern Colorado. The upper Rio Grande basin had just 40 percent of average snowpack on March 1, but the basin improved to 61 percent by the end of the month.

At the end of March, Colorado as a whole was at 96 percent of average snowpack.

The reservoir picture in northern Colorado is equally positive for this time of year. The reservoirs in the Colorado-Big Thompson system, including Horsetooth, Carter Lake and Lake Granby, were about 60 percent full at the end of March. That's an above-average figure for the first time since 1999.

"We've been gaining rather than losing," noted Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District spokesperson Brian Werner. "We're feeling OK about the upcoming year."

After the spring runoff, NCWCD is predicting storage to be about 10 percent above average. Runoff in the Cache la Poudre drainage is predicted to be 108 percent of average this year.

NCWCD set a quota of 60 percent last November for owners of C-BT water, and the board will revisit that figure on April 14. The average quota is 70 percent, Werner said.