An otherwise dismal snow year in Colorado has one clear upside: At least the snow that has fallen on the state isn’t dusty.
Each year, storms pick up dust from across the Southwest and drop it on Colorado’s mountain snowpack, where it can hasten melting. Earlier snowmelt has ripple effects on water supplies, forecasts, irrigators and ecosystems. But this year, the snow is white and clean all the way through, at least at the test locations observed by Jeff Derry’s team at the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies.
What gives? Derry chuckled. It’s storms that bring dust — and snow, he said.
“We haven’t had the dust because we haven’t had the storms,” Derry said. “They kind of come hand in hand.”
Since mid-January, Colorado has experienced its lowest snowpack since 1987. The winter storms that have dumped snow on the mountains have been quickly followed by warm temperatures, leaving a relatively shallow layer of snow at higher elevations. The snowpack is scarce, if present at all, at lower elevations.
Derry, executive director of the center’s Dust-on-Snow Program, spent early March traveling around the state, digging pits in the snow, and looking for rusty, brownish layers of dust.
The program’s snow monitoring sites are close to other data collection sites that are part of the federal snow telemetry, or SNOTEL, network. These stations, basically sheds outfitted with antennae and an array of scientific instruments, help track precipitation, temperature and other climate information across the West.
“This tour so far, after doing three sites, has been easy on my back,” he said. “SNOTEL stations aren’t lying. It’s a skimpy snowpack.”
The dust that typically mars Colorado’s snowpack is dropped by winter storms, which carry it from arid regions in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Some of that dust was loosened by human actions, like overgrazing and developing land.
Snow experts analyze dust on April 3, 2023, that formed a rusty-brown layer on snowpack in the Castle Creek watershed near Aspen. (Shannon Mullane, The Colorado Sun)Dark dust layers on the snow’s surface absorb more solar radiation, which causes the snow to melt faster and earlier in the season. When that happens, it changes how plants use water. They send more moisture into the air, which reduces the amount of water entering streams and rivers, according to researchers.
In some years since 2003, these dust events, as scientists call them, have blown over Colorado as early as October or November. Scientists observed 12 dust events in 2009 and in 2012, the most per year since 2003
But what Derry saw on his tour this year — from Rabbit Ears Pass near Steamboat Springs to Red Mountain Pass in southwestern Colorado — was a layer of white, even after a storm Friday cast a new layer of snow over much of Colorado.
Derry hoped the recent storm will help keep the snowpack from melting too early. Or, this year could offer something new, he said: A dust-free, albeit “skimpy,” snowpack.
But after 20 years of tracking dust-on-snow events, researchers have found that there are no seasons without dust. Derry will be watching out in March, April and May when about 80% of dust events typically happen, he said.
“Even though things might be looking good now. It just takes one nasty storm to change everything. With the shallow snowpack, we’ll see early melt anyway,” he said. “Add some dust and it could make it even worse.”
An early spring melt
Derry’s team started checking their snow monitoring sites seven to 10 days earlier than usual. They’re expecting an early spring melt, Derry said.
Colorado’s statewide snowpack typically reaches its peak around April 8, although the peaks typically occur earlier or later, depending on the watershed.
The melt starts soon after. Reservoirs help pace the flow of water as it rushes out of the mountains, storing water that becomes vital to farmers and ranchers later in the summer.
Colorado’s 2026 snowpack, depicted by the black line, continues to be the lowest on record since 1987, according to federal data. The snowpack normally peaks around April 8 as marked by the green “x.” It is measured as the snow-water equivalent, or the amount of liquid water in snow. (Natural Resources Conservation Service, Contributed)Dust can accelerate that melt by two to four weeks or 50 days in more extreme years. (Scientists are still trying to understand what factors cause extreme years and whether dust events can be better predicted.)
So can warmer temperatures, like the exceptional heat wave in the forecast for Colorado starting March 16. Some areas are pushing 20 degrees above normal this week and next week, according to the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.
“This heatwave may be the final nail in the coffin for any hope of snowpack recovery this season in Colorado’s Rockies and elsewhere across the West,” Bouldercast Weather, a team of Denver and Boulder weather experts, said on social media Monday.
A weekend storm could bring up to 6 inches of snow to the northern Rockies in Colorado, said David Byers, a meteorologist for the weather service in Grand Junction.
The water that runs out of Colorado’s mountains serves communities in 19 states before it eventually reaches the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.
Not much snow translates into very little water, Derry said. That could affect fire season, forest health and water resources for everyone in all the basins that Colorado serves.
When there are too many low-snow years in a row, reservoirs can struggle to keep up their water storage. Between 2020 and 2025, Colorado has had three below-average winters, two average winters and one above-average winter, according to federal data from SNOTEL stations.
Colorado is heading into this year’s spring runoff with about 87% of its usual reservoir storage, according to federal data.
“It’s great not to see any dust of course,” Derry said. “But it’s pretty scary to see the skimpy snowpack around the state.”
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