In a final analysis, heavy rains in mid-October saved the Upper Rio Grande Basin in 2025. How else do you explain an extreme weather event that increased the depth of the dying river at the time by 25 percent and added 100,000 acre-feet to the annual flow?

“Pretty amazing,” says Craig Cotten, division engineer in the San Luis Valley for the Colorado Division of Water Resources, in relaying the figures.

The Rio Grande was flowing at 100 cfs and dying in August, while the Conejos River at Mogote was below the 100 cfs mark. “We’re seeing low flows everywhere throughout the basin. It’s not a good situation,” Cotten said at the time.

September started to turn things around with an inch of rain, although the warm temperatures that began with a series of 60-degree weather days in February and maintained throughout the year were taking a toll on soil conditions and flow of the Rio.

Then Hurricane Priscilla formed over the Pacific, and by Oct. 12 remnants of the tropical storm created flash flooding conditions along the San Juan River in southwestern Colorado, which then spilled into the San Luis Valley. 

Now, the Rio Grande here at the end of 2025 is flowing 100 cfs higher than an average year. In other words there is more water in the river than is typical for December and all seems hunky-dory. 

Except that it is not.

A new study, which warns of an “existential water crisis” forming on the Rio Grande Basin, reports that climate scientists have reframed the 21st Century-era of drought as long-term aridification taking hold of the Valley landscape. Despite the recent years in 2024 and 2025 where total precipitation exceeded historical norms, the land is soaking up the moisture and calling for a true winter snowpack, which is the only type of weather that can turn fortunes of the Rio Grande Basin around.

Except deep levels of snow are not in the forecast heading into 2026. More trouble with the Rio Grande and its shallow, unconfined aquifer lies ahead.

Winter begins Dec. 21, but already it feels like winter is over. November 2025 registered as the second warmest November on record, and December is flashing 40-degree days and little in the way of actual snow either in the high elevations of the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo ranges or on the Valley floor.

The existing La Niña is delivering warmer temperatures for the Rio Grande Basin, as it typically does. 

“Unfortunately, the outlook for the next couple weeks (and maybe beyond) does not look good — very warm and dry,” says Russ Schumacher of the Colorado Climate Center at CSU-Fort Collins.

He notes that Monte Vista had the second-wettest fall season on record. But again, overall levels of moisture are not the problem. 

Instead, it is the ongoing lack of heavy snow in the high elevations of the San Juans and Sangre de Cristo Mountains coupled with a lack of freezing temperatures. Both are rare these days.

Call it the new normal — wet and warm falls, little in the way of a true winter with snowpack and below-zero temperatures, and the early arrival of springtime.

The year 2026 is looking to keep it going.