Colorado's Front Range has entered a drought, even while the state's snowpack is estimated to be 125% of normal levels and yet to peak.
In response to exceptionally dry conditions, many Colorado counties are upgrading their fire restrictions. This week, Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock increased the fire restrictions to Stage 2 in the unincorporated areas of the county.This reclassification now prohibits:
- Open burning of any kind.
- Use of fireworks.
- Use of fires in a chiminea, other portable fireplaces or patio fire pits.
- Campfires at developed campgrounds or picnic areas.
Exceptions to the fire ban exist for:
- Fires within liquid-fueled or gas-fueled stoves, grills, fire pits or other gas or liquid fueled appliance.
- Residential use of charcoal grill fires when such use is supervised by a responsible party at least 18 years of age.
- Fires contained within fireplaces and wood burning stoves within buildings only
- Fire suppression or fire department training fires.
This all comes on the heels of a massive wildfire near Golden last week.
Many Front Range residents look to the snowcapped mountains and can’t understand how they could be under drought conditions. There is currently an abnormally high snowpack in the mountains, but experts point out that it's still too early in the year to see significant snow melt. The National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) estimates that Colorado’s snowpack is at 125 percent of normal levels and the snowpack peak date is not expected until around April 9.
[caption id="attachment_11611" align="aligncenter" width="629"]
Information Current as of Mar. 6, 2017[/caption]
“We really don’t start to see significant snow melt in the mountains until you have several days of back-to-back temperatures that are well above freezing,” explains Brian Domonkos, a Snow Survey Supervisor at the NRCS. He continued:
In most cases we’ve had night time temperatures below freezing, and many of those nights have been successively below freezing. And that usually preserves our snowpack, especially in times as early as we are in the year where the solar radiation isn’t quite as strong as it is in May and late April.”Even though the Front Range has been experiencing daytime temperatures in the 70's, nighttime lows dip down to the 40's. At altitude, however, both the highs and the lows are significantly lower. Precipitation isn’t the only variable that goes into drought determinations. The NRCS also looks at temperatures, soil conditions, and stream flows.
The Service’s latest report predicts average precipitation for May and above-average temperatures, suggesting the possibility for an earlier snow-melt. This is welcome news to Colorado’s Front Range ranchers that can't come soon enough.
