Last week marked the start of a new water year for the Roaring Fork Watershed, and the rest of the American West. October 1 of each year is when water forecasters start measuring precipitation as snow in the high country, rather than rainfall.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, no part of the Roaring Fork watershed is experiencing drought conditions — a great start to the new water year.
Christina Medved with the Roaring Fork Conservancy said in addition, soil moisture is looking good.
“There won't be as much of that snow going into the soil to recharge the soil and the groundwater as much as there will be flowing into the rivers,” she said. “So the wetter the soil can be right now before we start accumulating snowfall, the better for us.”
Medved said even though we’re seeing higher than average temperatures right now, hopefully, things will cool down enough to allow snowpack to start forming at higher elevations. That would give the watershed a good starting point, in case there’s not much precipitation later in the winter.
She said last winter something that hampered snowpack was dust on snow.
“The Roaring Fork Valley ended up getting some pretty intense dust-on-snow events compared to other parts of the state,” she said. “And so we knew once those layers were exposed in June, the sun was really going to be impacting them, the snow was going to melt pretty fast.”
She said typically, snowfall is drier to start winter, which is great for skiers. But spring storms bringing lots of wet snow works wonders for runoff come spring.
Medved said people shouldn’t let their guards down, when it comes to fire danger.
“Because it is drier and flows are getting lower this time of year, which is typical,” she said. “But… wildfire danger is still out there. And so, we should still be mindful of that. Just because the temperatures are a little bit cooler in the mornings, and the leaves are starting to fall off of the trees, we do still have wildfire risk. And so we should just still remain vigilant with our behaviors around campfires and grills, et cetera.”
