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Tuesday, 16 January 2007 |
The Associated Press circulated a story this week about how full the plains reservoirs are.
Oh really?
The first article I noticed was in the Denver Post on January 14 by staff writer Kim McGuire. It ran with the headline, "Plains reservoirs get their fill." To be fair to the reporter, the article actually said nothing about the status of reservoirs on the plains. It simply noted that plains snowpack is higher than average while mountain snowpack is lower than average.
In the days that followed, the Associated Press ran a similar story with the headline "Blizzards fill plains reservoirs." Again, the article wasn't about reservoir storage but snowpack. This story ran in the Canon City Daily Record, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Aurora Sentinel, the Longmont Daily Times Call, the Sterling Journal Advocate, the Summit Daily News, and the Montrose Daily Press. The Loveland Reporter Herald got even more excited, declaring that Storms leave plains awash in liquid gold although the article noted that it's the winter wheat farmers who really stand to benefit.
Let's take an objective view of reservoir storage on the plains. Here's a map from the excellent NRCS Reservoir Storage page. See all those red dots out on the eastern plains? Those are the reservoirs with storage less than 50% of average. (Note the map is for conditions on December 31. I doubt things have changed much - there hasn't been a whole lot of melting so far this month!)
No, the blizzards did not fill the plains reservoirs.
And as long as we're quibbling, I submit that even as the snow begins to melt, a high snowpack on the plains won't necessarily translate into full reservoirs on the plains. As the snow on the plains begins to melt, much of it will find its way into tributaries that are actually downstream of the canals that fill the reservoirs - most plains reservoirs depend on mountain snowpack to fill. And if we have dry spring, senior ditch rights will prevent reservoirs from coming into priority to finish filling.
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