Colorado's veteran snow survey chief finds snowpack significantly below average

The wind outside was bellowing, puffing dry snow into furious plumes, when Mike Gillespie stepped out of his sport utility vehicle.

Gillespie, the snow survey supervisor for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Colorado, has visited this spot along U.S. 40 just below the Berthoud Pass summit at the same time each year for 28 years to measure the snowpack. In his first year, when snow piled up twice as much as normal, it took a heroic effort just to climb the 200 yards to the measurement site.

Thursday, it took about five minutes.

The first manual snow sampling of the season Thursday confirmed what automated sensors have been suggesting for weeks: The water available in Colorado's snowpack is significantly below average.

Statewide, snowpack is 73 percent of average. That ranks as the fourth-driest measurement in the past 30 years, according to the conservation service. No river basin in Colorado is above average.

No year in the past three decades that has started this far below average has recovered to average snowpack by the start of spring, Gillespie said.

"It's pretty evident that this is one of the drier years," Gillespie said. "It's not looking like a good start at all to the year."

Gillespie, who started doing snow surveys in Wyoming 31 years ago, has the experience to know. But Thursday was the last survey he will do. As of the end of today, Gillespie is retired.

That is a substantial loss of institutional knowledge in the obscure but important world of Colorado snowpack analysis. Gillespie's snowpack measurements are closely watched by Colorado water managers, who use them to determine how much water will be available in the spring and summer.

Gillespie said his analyses can predict the amount of water in the spring runoff within about 10 percent.

Every year, Gillespie has overseen an effort to manually measure snowpack at more than 100 high-altitude

Just below the Berthoud Pass summit, Mike Ardison fights the wind and snow Thursday to lay out 25-foot intervals between measuring sites. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)"snow courses" across the state. He also has been instrumental in expanding the state's use of automated snowpack sensors, which now number about 110 and provide daily snowpack updates.

"That has not been glitch-free," said Klaus Wolter, a climatologist at the University of Colorado, who praised Gillespie's commitment to providing an accurate, comprehensive snowpack picture. "It has been important to maintain those snow courses."

Indeed, there is a certain vintage flair to Gillespie's method. The tools he uses are simple: a specially marked measuring tube and a basic scale. Measurements are written down by hand.

It is understated science, much like the understated scientist who performs it.

Nolan Doesken, the state climatologist, said Gillespie brought a sense of competence to the high stakes of water-supply prediction and an aura of calmness to often panicky meetings about drought or flooding.

"He was just always steady and reliable," Doesken said. "You could always count on the data."

On Thursday, Gillespie's measurements on Berthoud Pass matched what the sensors had been saying.

Snow depths measured in the teens and 20s of inches, with an average water content of 6.3 inches. That is barely more than half as much as the 10.5 inches of water content in the snow at the same spot at the same time last year. Sapling trees and fallen logs poked above the snow line on the course.



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