Industry News
As the warm weather comes in we start to see the snowpack decline rapidly. Statewide, the Colorado snowpack has declined a massive 6-FEET in the last 15-days, according to a Facebook post by meteorologist Chris Tomer.
Snow is melting very quickly across Colorado’s mountains (especially the Southern Mountains). On average, we’ve lost about 6 feet of snowpack in the last 15 days (since 4/19) statewide. That number jumps to 8 feet or more in the Southern Mountains. Snow melted around-the-clock over the last 5 days. That will change this week with a few good overnight freezes up high. On the NRCS snowpack water equivalent (SWE) graph below notice how steep the black line is dropping.
– Meteorologist Chris Tomer
Normally, only a few of the higher ski areas would still be open about now. As we can see from the graph, as the snow melts most resorts’ thoughts will turn to summer activities. What that’ll look like this year, we don’t know yet.
- Related: NASA Seeks Answers From Snowpack
Today’s snowpack is pretty much normal for northern Colorado, and about 60% normal in the south (above). On April 1st, the traditional peak for snowpack, northern Colorado was about 10-15% above average, and the south bang on average.
