April continued the cold, wet pattern we’ve seen in the upper Colorado Basin and, especially, in the Great Basin since February. With the already large snowpacks and the forecast for this pattern to persist, flooding becomes more and more likely with each passing day. The chart below shows percentile rankings for the SNOTEL sites in our forecast area:

Percentile rankings at individual SNOTEL sites. Periods of record must be at least 10 years to be ranked.

SNOTELs represented by black squares indicate the highest reading within the period of record for that site. At the beginning of April these sites were mostly in the central Wasatch and the headwaters of the Yampa. As month progressed, the number of these daily records increased dramatically. The chart below shows a time series of the number of sites reporting record high snow water amounts going back to January 1:

Over the last week, the number of sites reporting record values has increased each day. These increases reflect both the wet period over the region as well as the melting that occurred in previous years that are used as comparison points.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...