His voice hardly crackles with excitement, but even Ridgway Outdoor Experience owner Albert Adams admits to a sense of anticipation for the coming summer season. After all, one of the most popular local recreation resources is more plentiful than it has been in years: water.

“It’s been great,” Adams said. “Any time you have a banner winter, the skiing is good; the boating is good. You have everything you need. Boating is really taking off — even the Dolores River is going crazy for a change.”

Of course, how spring will progress is really anybody’s guess.

“It just depends on how fast the runoff goes,” Adams said. “The only dark side is, if it takes too long for the snow to melt, people may not be able to get into the backcountry but the spring skiing should be great.”

With snowpack levels across the state consistently more than 100 percent of an average year — including 124 percent for the Gunnison River Basin and 126 percent of average for the Upper Colorado River Basin as of last week — it comes as something as a surprise that forecasters expect a drier than average spring.

“The precipitation outlook for May, June and July is below normal,” said Meteorologist Joe Ramey of the National Weather Service Office in Grand Junction. “Conditions are centered around Salt Lake, but extending into the Four Corners Region. This is our dry period, and we are hoping to slowly take the snowpack off.”

As for precipitation, below-normal conditions should last into mid-summer, when the monsoons begin, Ramey said.

“Of course the monsoon itself is always a crapshoot,” he said. “How it will affect us is anybody’s guess. We just hope the snowpack keeps the mountains cool, and that it isn’t too warm in the afternoons.”

For those whose living depends on water, this year comes as a much-needed shot in the arm — although for Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association manager Marc Catlin, adjusting to a year without drought is something of a shift.

“I started in 2002,” Catlin said. “I’ve never had a year like this. All I have dealt with is drought. But this is real good for right now. We are going to have high water in places that haven’t had it in a long time. The high winds kind of bother me because they take a lot of moisture with them. But we are getting ourselves ready for high water on the Uncompahgre, and as those days approach we will monitor things even more closely.”
Although traditionally the river crests around June 21, it has been peaking several weeks earlier for the past seven or eight years, Catlin said.

“A fellow up in Silverton is pointing to dust on the snow causing it to melt,” he said.

“Regardless of whether or not you believe in global warming, there is some sort of change going on and we all need to be aware of it. We may be looking at change where high water comes early.”

When it comes to the water users association’s 566 miles of major canals and laterals, keeping the water moving is crucial, he said.

“We are just watching real close, making sure trash and debris don’t get caught in the headgates, and that the canals take water out into agricultural areas, so our farmers won’t be shut off by trash if there is a flood — they don’t appreciate that much.”

Although high flows on the Uncompahgre are not as high as they were before Ridgway Dam was constructed in 1990, when water could run as high as 4,000 to 5,000 cubic feet per second at the Main Street Bridge, Cow Creek below the dam can still run high, he said.

“It’s still a wild little crick with more capacity than people give it credit for,” Catlin said. “It can move a lot of water, rock and gravel down from up high. Last Sunday it was pretty warm, and I think we had 675 cfs in the Uncompahgre River at Colona, and we were bringing in 500 feet through the Gunnison Tunnel.”

When runoff is at its highest, the association will cut back on water from the Gunnison Tunnel, and use river water for irrigation instead, Catlin said.

When it comes to water from Ridgway reservoir, the real issue is not the runoff that comes down from above, but what spills and splashes — uncontrolled — below the reservoir, said Tri-County Water Conservancy District at Ridgway Dam Supervisor Ion Spor.

“So much has been developed — where you used to have one farmer whose fields might flood, you now have subdivisions with people on oxygen,” Spor said.

As for water flowing down into Ridgway Reservoir, which has a capacity of 84,000 acre-feet (the amount of water needed to cover an acre, one foot deep) releases are already underway.

“We are right on track to meet our 140,000 acre-foot projection,” Spor said. “That is the amount of water expected to flow in between April 1 and July 31. We have already released enough, that with what we have in open storage, it should keep us safe. We should never go above 2,000 cfs at the Colona Gauging Station.

“We’ve got lots of water,” he said. “If the wind quits, it ought to be a pretty decent year.”
In Delta County, where the Gunnison and Uncompahgre Rivers converge, officials expect to see water levels that have not been attained since 1984 — a record high-water year when a dam on Grand Mesa was breached — according to an article appearing in the Delta County Independent this week. County Preparedness Coordinator Rob Fiedler told the Delta County Commissioners, “We are going to have a spill at some point along the Gunnison River, whether it is controlled or uncontrolled.” 

Flows in the Gunnison are expected to peak around May 23, he noted.

Should a flood occur, the communities of Western Colorado have a strong advantage when it comes to working together, lifelong Montrose resident Catlin noted.

“Everybody has a mission,” he said. “We can cooperate pretty well, and move equipment to help one another. Sometimes you just have to do what’s in front of you, and that helps everybody.

“One of the good things about this community is when tough times show up, people know how to pull together, put politics aside, and just grab a shovel.”

Snowpack levels can be checked online at the Natural Resource Conservation Service Web site, http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/sno_narr3_pl, while river levels and hydrologic predictions can be found online at the National Weather Service site, http://www.crh.noaa.gov.