WATFSummaryMay2002

• Title: Task Force Meeting Minutes
• Date: 5/23/2002
• Description: Minutes
• Basin: Statewide
• Drought Mitigation - Doc Type: WATF Meeting Summary

day it heats up a little more. The only place that will be worse through averages is up near
Julesberg. In terms of precipitation we've already seem this. This is color-coded. Some of these
you have in your handouts. Some of these you won't have. 1'm going to give all the ones in the
handout, and I have some new stuff that I want to show. For this group confirms that April was
very dry, some locations had no precipitation in the entire month, out here in Weld County, for
example, so we sawall this universally below average across the state, and sometimes way below
average. For the water year, that just continues to enhance the dryness of...only a few locations up
here in the northwest were near average for the water year, or have been near average for the water
year, but those locations are very dry, and we're seeing that in the reservoir storage and the
streamflow. 1'm going to display the worst. This is the SDI... this is a 6-month SDI through
April, negative 2 in a number of locations, dryer through here. You look at 24-month SDI, how
long have we really been in a drought numbers. Minus 2 down here in the extreme southwest,
minus one in a number of locations, some areas are not too much difference in zero, a few areas
still have a little bit of residual positive values over this time period because it was wet so early.
Now how much can we come out of this, how quickly? We take those one year SDIs, project it
out 6 months, with average precipitation, not that it will really improve anything, in fact it's not
surprising, the mountain snowpack, for example, we're obviously going to have to wait for the
next winter. So there's no way we're going to come out of this drought until next winter at the
very earliest, and we can certainly have rains that produce irrigation demand and we can help the
dryland farmers, but the real question is going to be what happens next winter. What happens if
we have a P value of .8? That means a wet next 6 months. From the SDIs we can see we get
some recovery but we still stay in negative. Southwest, still below minus one, even with well
above precipitation. So the message is, it's not going to be easy to come out of the drought,
particularly in the mountains and the Southwest, the Front Range area, and the northwest could in
fact come out of this moderately long drought with significant rains in the summer. However, we
have the opposite situation where we're way below average, this a P of point 2, that routine gets a
little bit worse, not surprising, so summer rainfall could help significantly for the eastern plains,
it's not going to do much for the mountains, we have to wait until next winter.

- When you say coming out of drought, I think we need to watch the word drought here,
when you're talking a meteorological drought, impact drought, hydrologic drought, agricultural
drought.. .it's not scales (?).

Roger - By inference I was, because when I talk about the snowpack, obviously that builds up the
streams, that puts water into the reservoir. So what 1'm implying is that there's different.. .there
are different impacts. If we have a wet spring, then the meteorological drought can be remedied in
the eastern plains. To remedy the meteorological drought in the mountains would take a stepback.
The impacts are such related to that. . . that means the people that.

- That snowpack in the winter is going to alleviate the hydrologic drought. It's going to
recharge the ground, there are many other factors.. .(?)

Roger - And I agree. But 1'mjust saying that.. .meteorologically there are, you have different
climate regimes in the mountains than you do on the plains, for example, so it would come out of
the meteorological drought, to get those SDI values up will take different situations for the
mountains than it will for the plains. I completely agree with you that the impact is a much more

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