CODOS UPDATE january 18, 2023: crazy storm cycle, Workshop Reminder

Greetings from Silverton,

The seemingly endless string of storms going back to just after Christmas appears to be taking a breather starting later this evening in the Silverton area. Just in the last couple days we received 2” of precipitation as 1.5’ snow accumulation. Yesterday afternoon winds kicked up a little bit, and with all the fresh snowfall, quickly prompted closure of 550 in both directions, which is still currently closed, just the way we like it. At Swamp Angel (11,060’) the snowpack is a few inches shy of 2-meters (6.6’), the snowpack will settle and hopefully future storms will push us over that arbitrary mark. The snowpack is looking very healthy for this time of year throughout Colorado with the exception of the Arkansas Basin which has largely missed out on recent storms. Following the evolution of the snowpack this season I have been struck by how similar it is to last year. Like this year, WY2022 experienced a storm cycle starting late December. As of a few days ago current SWE totals were nearly identical to that of last year for most regions, however since then we have surpassed last year by a few inches SWE. This is interesting but as we all know anything can happen, there is plenty accumulation season remaining. Hopefully we won’t have a repeat of last year where we went into ablation season just shy of a median snowpack in most areas, but then severe dust-on-snow conditions coupled with a dry, warm spring rapidly depleted the snowpack, causing early runoff and greatly reducing overall yields.

We are catching up on our storm reports and will produce reports from this last round shortly. So far this season we have observed one dust event that sits 9” above the ground surface, a location that will have minimal influence on snowmelt come springtime.

Snow Research Meets Water Resources Operations in the San Juans: Planning for the collaborative workshop hosted by CSAS and Colorado State University (CSU) is coming along nicely. It will be held in Silverton, Colorado on Tuesday, February 7th, 2023, from 9-5 at City Hall and online. For those who wish to attend remotely a Zoom link will be circulated soon. If you plan to stay the night we recommend making reservations now. We have a small block of rooms reserved at a couple hotels. A list of hotels in Silverton can be found here (scroll down). Please contact me with questions and hotel contacts. You can register here for the Workshop. Please see the Workshop webpage for more details.

Take Care,

Jeff Derry