GRAND JUNCTION — In a Colorado Mesa University ballroom Tuesday, about 200 farmers, water professionals and community members watched as the Colorado River District staff flipped through graph after graph during a presentation.
Each new slide had one fundamental message: Colorado and downstream states are heading into summer with epicly poor water conditions.
“If there’s anything in your memory about a dry year that you’ve seen, a warm year that you’ve seen, 2026 is beyond all of that,” said Raquel Flinker, the district’s director of interstate and regional water resources.
Research groups, news organizations and water officials have been blaring warnings about the worst snowpack in history and water supply concerns heading into the summer. In some ways, conditions are so bad, the state is headed into uncharted territory, experts said. In the face of a worrisome year, farmers, reservoir operators and city utilities are focused on getting the best data possible. They’re turning to scientists and pilots with newfangled snowpack measurement methods — plus the tried-and-true measurement methods used since the early 1900s.Their goal: Figure out how to use a scant water supply as effectively as possible.
“There’s not a lot of snow out there, nor has there been,” said Jeff Deems, co-founder and chief technical officer with Airborne Snow Observatories Inc. “We’ve had very little snow and it’s melting early.”
The ASO teams found themselves in a flurry of activity in March. The company, born out of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, takes to the skies and slopes each year to snag snow measurements using laser technology and staff members’ own two feet.
Their flights provide a highly detailed and accurate snapshot of conditions in each watershed. Water managers use the ASO lidar maps (short for a remote sensing method called light detection and ranging) to complement federal data. In all, it gives reservoir operators, city water utilities and water officials a better idea of how much water is in the mountains — and what their summer water supply might be.
ASO did 18 flights in seven days across Colorado, from St. Vrain and Big Thompson watersheds in northern Colorado to the Rio Grande, Boulder Creek, Roaring Fork and Dolores watersheds in central and southern parts of the state. What they found was more grim data.
“It’s been pretty frantic,” Deems said.
Fine-tuning the data
Mountain snowpack is a vital water source for Coloradans and downstream communities in 19 states and Mexico. For decades, Colorado communities have relied on federal data provided by snow-telemetry stations, which often feature small sheds outfitted with scientific gear in remote parts of the mountains.
These measurement stations, called the SNOTEL network, provide continuous data and many stations have accrued decades of historical data.
The network has been around since the 1970s and is made up of over 900 stations in the West, 114 of which are in Colorado. Researchers have been taking widespread manual measurements since the early 1900s.
According to SNOTEL data, Colorado’s snowpack was at 24% of its 30-year norm as of Wednesday, the same date, April 8, that usually marks its peak each year. The snowpack for the roughly 250,000-square-mile Colorado River Basin was at about 25% of its norm, according to a Colorado Basin River Forecast Center update Tuesday morning — one day after the basin’s normal peak date, April 6.
Colorado’s historically low snowpack showed at Red Mountain Pass in southwest Colorado Wednesday, April 8, 2026. The statewide snowpack typically peaks on April 8 each year. (Shannon Mullane, The Colorado Sun)But SNOTEL stations miss snow below 9,000 feet and above 12,000 feet. They are a point measurement: They don’t, and can’t, actually measure an entire basin.
ASO flights capture all elevations in a watershed, instead of just one point. In the past these flights have found more water in Colorado watersheds than appeared in SNOTEL data. But the flights only provide a snapshot of winter conditions, on a certain day at a certain time, instead of a continuous historical record.
This year, not so much. Some parts of watersheds are doing better or worse than indicated by the SNOTEL stations, Deems said. But by and large, the ASO data is lining up with SNOTEL measurements and federal river forecast centers.
“There is quite a lot less snow than we’re used to having. No surprise there,” he said.
The ASO teams flew over the Blue River watershed near Silverthorne and Breckenridge. The terrain funnels water into the 65-mile waterway that eventually flows into the Colorado River, the lifeblood for communities, farms, environments and industries in much of the Southwest and parts of northern Mexico.
The Blue River also feeds Dillon Reservoir, an important water source for Denver Water, Colorado’s oldest water utility, and about 1.5 million people in the Denver area.
For most of the watershed, the snowpack on March 20 was about half what it was on April 11, 2025.
But ASO also found variations in watersheds. Some areas are substantially worse than last year. Other parts are about the same as last year, he said.
And knowing exactly where water is — and isn’t — can help reservoir managers and city planners use water more efficiently this summer.
“That’s not like a miracle save or anything,” Deems said. “But what that says is that there’s enough complexity out there that we need to measure it carefully so that those managers understand that there may be more water in parts of their watersheds than is suggested by one or two (SNOTEL) stations.”
Planning for a hot, dry summer
As snowpack melts, irrigation district managers in the Grand Valley, an area with some of the most secure, reliable and oldest water rights in the state, are trying to decide how to handle their water supply for the summer, some said at the Colorado River District gathering Tuesday.
Long-time peach growers in Palisade are keeping an eye on the skies as they aim for efficient water use.
Everybody is trying to be very cautious, said Priscilla Walker, a Palisade resident whose family has owned peach orchards for decades.
“Peaches don’t use the water as much as alfalfa and subdivisions,” she said. “Would you rather have the best peaches in the world or fountains, neon signs, swimming pools and Kentucky bluegrass lawns? That’s really the choice because we have no control over how much water falls.”
The next question for water managers is: How much will actually end up in reservoirs?
Some of the snow simply turns directly into water vapor in a process called sublimation. Plants and soils suck up snowmelt as it passes through watersheds toward rivers. Some water can evaporate along the way.
“All of these factors affect what fraction of the snowpack we get as runoff,” Deems said. “Last year, one of the stories was that runoff efficiency was quite low. Given the hot, dry, windy weather that we’ve had, we might expect similarly very low runoff efficiencies this year.”
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