Officials prep for shortages

Upper Colorado River officials are preparing to send extra water downstream from Flaming Gorge Reservoir as drought planning stays in force despite a fresh April snow forecast. (usbr.gov) The Bureau of Reclamation says Flaming Gorge entered the “spring peak runoff season release pattern” on March 1, and as of April 5 the reservoir stood at 6,022.79 feet, or 82 percent of live storage capacity. Reclamation’s current status page says March inflow was about 56,520 acre-feet, 99 percent of average. (usbr.gov) The larger problem is downstream at Lake Powell, the main savings account for the Upper Basin. Reclamation’s March 4 forecast put water-year 2026 unregulated inflow to Powell at 4.95 million acre-feet, 52 percent of average, and said the projected annual release from Powell could fall below 7.48 million acre-feet. (usbr.gov) A separate Colorado Basin River Forecast Center update on April 1 was even drier, showing a full water-year 2026 Lake Powell inflow forecast of 3.879 million acre-feet, 40 percent of average, with April-through-July runoff at 1.4 million acre-feet, 22 percent of average. (cbrfc.noaa.gov) That is why Upper Basin drought rules still point to emergency help from upstream reservoirs. Reclamation’s draft 2026 Annual Operating Plan says a July 2025 study projected Powell below elevation 3,525 feet, the trigger for planning drought response actions during the May 1, 2025 to April 30, 2026 drought-response year. (usbr.gov) Those actions can include moving water from Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo reservoirs to Powell under the Upper Basin Drought Response Operations Agreement. Reclamation said last year that those short-term tools remain available through 2026. (usbr.gov) The new snow in Colorado is real, but it is short-term weather, not a season reset. The National Weather Service’s snowfall guidance explains that its higher-end totals are low-probability scenarios, and Denver Gazette reporting on April 12 said the latest round could bring up to 12 inches mainly to the state’s highest peaks. (weather.gov; denvergazette.com) Early April storms can improve mountain snowpack, but reservoir operators plan around total runoff, storage levels and legal trigger points, not a single weekend forecast. Reclamation’s own weekly hydrology summary for April 5 showed Upper Colorado snow-water-equivalent tracking below median in key areas feeding the system. (usbr.gov) So the basin is in the position Western water managers know well: watching fresh snow fall while preparing for shortages anyway. The next meaningful test is not how much lands on a few peaks this week, but how much runoff actually reaches Lake Powell this spring and summer. (usbr.gov; cbrfc.noaa.gov)