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Colorado's snowpack is off to a slow start, but holiday weekend snow storms should give it a boost, climate experts and forecasters said.
The snowpack that builds in Colorado's mountains each winter forms a large, frozen reservoir and a key water source for communities across the state. How much falls -- and how quickly it melts -- determines which crops farmers plant and what drought restrictions cities might implement. As of Nov. 26, Colorado's snowpack was 36% of the 30-year norm, but there is snow in the forecast and a lot of winter still to come.
"I hope we do wind up getting some precipitation and snow in the very near future because ... we are running pretty low," Brian Domonkos, Colorado snow survey supervisor for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, said during a Water Conditions Monitoring Committee meeting Nov. 18. At that point, the snowpack was closer to 25% of the norm, he said.
The National Weather Service expects a quick, little holiday weekend storm to roll over Colorado from the Pacific Northwest between Friday and Saturday. The storm is likely to drop 1 or 2 inches of snow on the central Rocky Mountains, with up to 4 inches in northern areas and higher elevations, said Tom Renwick, senior meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.
Another storm will roll through Sunday and will move over the southwestern Colorado, dropping 4 to 8 inches in the San Juans and Grand Mesa. The northern mountains and flat tops north of Interstate 70 will likely receive 4 to 6 inches over the holiday weekend, Renwick said.
The actual snowfall could vary, he said Wednesday.
"It's really been fluctuating, so our confidence is low at this point," he said.
Over the weekend, daily highs will be warmer than normal. Once next week rolls around, temperatures will start to cool below normal for this time of year, Renwick said. Durango and Grand Junction might see high temperatures around 40 degrees by Monday. Aspen's high will be around 33 degrees, before warming later in the week. In northern Colorado, temperatures in Craig will top out at 30 degrees Monday, Renwick said.
After a warm and dry Thanksgiving, a cold front will move across the northern half of Colorado bringing the possibility of up to 2 inches of snow Friday night and Saturday morning.
"It's possible it gets cold enough that some of those roads could get a little slippery come sunrise Saturday morning," said Bernie Meier, a NWS meteorologist in Boulder.
The state's snowpack is off to a slow start, climate experts said.
Statewide precipitation was at 92% of normal as of Nov. 18, mostly because of a mid-October storm that caused flooding in parts of southwestern Colorado, Domonkos said. Most of that precipitation, however, came as rain.
In each of Colorado's major river basins, the snowpack still hovered between 20% and 33% of their 30-year norms as of mid-November. Zooming out across the West, snowpack wasn't much better anywhere else, Domonkos said.
"While we are pretty bad in terms of snowpack here, it's looking pretty abysmal across the rest of the Western United States," he said.
November was almost balmy in parts of Colorado, climate experts said. But with a few storms rolling over the state, snow started to gather in higher elevations in mid-November.
A storm dumped anywhere from 6 to 12 inches of snow on the San Juan Mountains over Nov. 23 and 24, Renwick said. Weaker mid-November storms brought 4 to 8 inches across the Western Slope.
"So we've been getting it," he said. "It's just been melting quickly."
Looking ahead, about half of Colorado -- including much of the Western Slope -- is heading into three months of warmer than usual temperatures and a weak La Niña season, said Peter Goble, assistant state climatologist for the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University.
In a La Niña season, cooler-than-normal water in the eastern Pacific Ocean affects tropical winds and the Northern Hemisphere's jet stream, which is the high-altitude air current that brings storms, or lack thereof, to Colorado.
Colorado tends to have more moisture in an El Niño season, but the La Niña can bring more rain and snow to the northern Rocky Mountains. The outcome is still uncertain: Long-term forecasting is like playing poker with a few extra aces and kings, Goble said.
"You may have an idea of how things are tilted, but you can still draw a really crummy hand," he said.
What happens in the winter and spring has long-term impacts on the next year's water supplies for farmers, environments, industries and cities.
In Colorado, spring of 2025 was slightly drier than the 1971 to 2000 historical average, but it matched conditions in Colorado over the last 15 years, Goble said.
Across the Colorado River Basin, spring 2025 was among the driest on record, according to the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center's annual report. The basin, which provides water to 40 million people, spans seven Western states and parts of northwestern Mexico.
Measurement stations recorded their lowest or second-lowest precipitation amounts, and climate forecasters kept dropping their estimates for the amount of runoff into Lake Powell, an immense reservoir that provides water storage and hydropower for millions of people.
The runoff forecasts started at 5.15 million acre-feet, or 81% of average, in January. By August, the lake had received 2.6 million acre-feet, or 41% of average, the report said. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water used by two to three households.
By early September, about 25% of Colorado was experiencing extreme drought, the third worst classification out of four tracked by the U.S. Drought Monitor. It's normal to see signs severe to exceptional drought in 10% of the state in an average year, Goble said.
The drought conditions have improved: As of Tuesday, 1.3% of the state showed signs of extreme drought.
Climate experts watch soil moisture closely in the fall, Goble said. When more moisture is frozen in soils during the winter, more spring runoff can reach streams and reservoirs. With drier conditions, some of that snowmelt ends up recharging soils, which leaves less for humans and other ecosystems.
Soil moisture varies widely at the local level, Goble said.
"For the most part, what we see is a little bit more optimistic than what we've seen in recent years," he said. "I'm curious about how that's going to affect things."
With more optimism about soil conditions tempered by a slow start to the snow season, climate experts will wait to see what conditions emerge in spring.
"The real take home point is that we need more precipitation at this point," Domonkos said. "My fingers are crossed."