State climatologist Russ Schumacher appeared on the latest episode of the Outdoor Citizen podcast to talk to us about Colorado’s snow and climate. Schumacher, who took over as Colorado’s state climatologist in 2017, is also professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. In a time of climate change and increasingly unpredictable events, Schumacher and people like him are here to help us all make sense of it.
“There’s always something new happening,” and that’s what fascinates him most about his work and the weather. In Colorado, especially, he said. “We have such fascinating weather. The weather and the climate can vary hugely over short distances.”
It’s both fascinating and challenging, he said.
The San Luis Valley is a great example of the variability of weather, he noted. “For one thing, I think it’s not as well understood as other parts of the state.”
Everybody loves to study the weather in the northern part of the state, he said, but “I think some of what happens there in the Valley is so fascinating, and a lot of times it flies under the radar either literally or figuratively.”
New radar installed near the Alamosa airport helps track local weather, he said.
Schumacher and his colleagues at the climate center just released the third edition of the Climate Change in Colorado report. The last time that report was updated was in 2014. A lot has happened since then, he said, and they realized a new update was needed.
You can read the report here. Schumacher broke down some of the key takeaways from that report.
LIke most of the planet, Colorado has been warming. Colorado has warmed by 3 degrees fahrenheit on average since the late 1880s. Precipitation is much harder to pin down, but the past two decades have been very dry.
As the planet continues to warm, Colorado will see the effects.
Climate models are all over the place, he said, when it comes to precipitation. There is a lot of variation. When it comes to snow and water, he said, even if the precipitation doesn’t change and the amount of liquid coming out of the sky doesn’t change “the fact that it’s warmer is going to put more stress on those water resources.”
In the summer, when the air is hotter it means quicker evaporation. In the winter, there is a shift in timing when runoff occurs in the spring and that changes when there are peak flows in the river.
“Warming is going to have impacts on our snow in the winter and our water supply in the summer,” he said.
We’re haven’t yet seen much of the effects for this El Niño year. Schumacher says there is still more time for that. Yet, we’re still below average in many of the nations’ southern river basins.
The current atmospheric river conditions on the west coast and in California are likely to head our way in the coming days and weeks. “It’ll be on the warm side when it hits Southern Colorado, as well.”
“Nowhere in the state is looking great at this point,” but we are much better than we were at the end of 2023. This last bout of snowstorms this month is helping. But it’s not a “boom year” that is typical with El Niño years.
There’s still hope to be had, he said.
The storms coming from the southwest are typically warmer than winter weather. He said that Saturday, Feb. 4, was the wettest day Fort Collins has seen. The city received 1.66 inches of precipitation in just that one day, which he said is not typical for early February.
The current snow drought will have long-term effects. It’s been “most acute” in Southern Colorado. There have been more years with low snowpack rather than a higher snowpack.
Since Colorado is a headwaters state, that doesn’t just impact us but the states surrounding us. Their water levels are reliant on Colorado’s snowpack.
The larger reservoirs in the Colorado River system require more consistently good years. One good year won’t necessarily create good levels. That system is in better shape than it was a year ago, but overall is in a bad state.
In the Rio Grande basin, he said, as the river flows down to New Mexico, there are increasing water supply issues further south. “Even if you have a good snowpack year, if the summer monsoon doesn’t come through and it’s really hot, that air is really thirsty for that water. It’s gonna try and pull that water out of the soils and out of the crops back into the air which means if you’re growing crops you’ve got to irrigate more, which means you’re using more water. That all is really a vicious cycle that puts stress on the system all around.”
Listen to the podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts to hear more about what Schumacher is seeing.