University of Colorado Boulder. Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

For water providers and others in the Rocky Mountain West who depend on the pulse of runoff from the melting snowpack from April through July, snowpack monitoring is drought monitoring. A well-below-average snowpack as measured by snow-water equivalent (SWE) is a harbinger of not only low water supply but also other drought impacts, such as increased fire risk and below-normal summer soil moisture. However, the snowpack is complex, varying...

Using documents and information obtained through a series of 22 structured interviews, the Colorado Climate Preparedness Project provides a catalog of climate impacts and adaptation activities and options in five climate-sensitive sectors in the state of Colorado: water; wildlife, ecosystems and forests; electricity; agriculture; and outdoor recreation.

The current El Niño event is very strong, and is expected to affect weather around the globe, and in Colorado, through next spring. The impacts of El Niño are more complex over Colorado than other parts of the West. Strong El Niño conditions improve the odds for wetter-than-normal conditions in most parts of Colorado, especially in fall and spring. However, strong El Niño conditions also tend to bring dry mid-winters to our North-Central mountains....