As March rolled into April, Ken Beck was keeping his eye on the snowdrifts piled on slopes around Vallecito Reservoir in Colorado’s southwestern mountains. Snow reports showed there was about 300,000 acre-feet of water in that snow waiting to flow into the reservoir, he said.
The network of pipes and massive bathtubs that is the Colorado River Basin’s reservoir storage system is going to see some recovery this year thanks to higher-than-average snowpack. That’s a promising sign for aquatic habitats in need of a health boost.
Big crowds were out at Folsom Lake on Memorial Day, and with a record-breaking snowpack, the lake is now nearly full. But there’s also a large amount of water being released downstream
There’s now a plan underway to store more water in the lake, and that involves raising Folsom Dam.
February snowfall might have fallen behind January’s brisk pace, but the Upper Colorado River Basin will go into March still well above average snowpack levels.
With all the headlines about snow in California and Utah, the area that matters most to the Las Vegas valley and Lake Mead is the region around the Colorado River’s headwaters — where the river is born among the peaks in and around Rocky Mountain National Park.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
