Water year 2011 is increasingly looking like one for the record books. A series of weak to moderate storms has impacted northern Utah and northwestern Colorado nearly continuously since the middle of February. Many SNOTEL sites are showing readings in the top 5% of historical years:

March 28, 20011 SNOTEL SWE values in context with historical years. Credit: NRCS/NWCC

While the next official water supply forecasts won’t be generated until next week, weekly forecast updates are available from the CBRFC webpage:

http://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/weeklyesp/weeklyesptable.php?id=GLDA3

Forecasts are generally increasing in the northern part of the basin and decreasing in the southern part of the basin. Aggregated to Lake Powell, the model guidance is nearly the same as it was a the beginning of the month. The current median forecast is 9.2 MAF of inflow to Lake Powell for the April-July period.

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