Click on the thumbnail graphics for yesterday’s statewide high/low graph along with the Upper Colorado and Rio Grande basins high/low graphs.

From The Pueblo Chieftain (Matt Hildner):

Sunday’s snowstorm did little to boost the snowpack in the Rio Grande Basin, leaving it slightly behind levels when drought hammered the state in 2002. Craig Cotten, the state’s division engineer for the San Luis Valley, told the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable Tuesday that the basin’s snowpack currently sits at 31 percent of average…

He cautioned that there still was time for Mother Nature to catch up, citing three-month forecasts from the National Weather Service that said the region had an equal chance of average precipitation. That forecast, however, was coupled with a three-month prediction for above-average temperatures, which could result in an early runoff.

“That’s not going to help a whole lot,” Cotten said.

The poor start to the winter comes on the heels of a below-average winter last year. Cotten said flows this year on the valley’s two major rivers — the Conejos and the Rio Grande — are down to 53 percent of average and 63 percent, respectively.

Moreover, the unconfined aquifer, or shallower of the valley’s two major ground water bodies, lost 121,000 acre-feet this year, dropping it to its lowest levels since officials began tracking it in 1976. The unconfined aquifer is fed primarily from the irrigation ditches that draw water from the Rio Grande and carry it to farmers’ fields where it supplies crops and the remainder filters down.