8 April Update: CO River Mainstem Flows Projected At 38% Of Normal For 2026; Yampa River 36%; San Juan River 26% [View all]

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Early April status reports and forecasts are important because they provide a critical snapshot of assessing where things stand and how much water will be available for the summer. This week is typically when snowpack peaks for the year before it begins a gradual melt out. But snowpack in the Colorado River headwaters this year peaked nearly a month early on March 17 and now sits at just 27% of median. Snowpack in the Roaring Fork River basin is 26% of normal.

“We’ve never seen anything like this in memory,” said Raquel Flinker, director of interstate and regional water resources at the Colorado River District’s State of the River meeting in Grand Junction Tuesday. “If there’s anything in your memory about a dry year that you’ve seen, a warm year that you’ve seen, 2026 is beyond all of that. It’s far beyond 2002, which has been the year we normally think of as the worst year in hydrology.”



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”In a Tuesday water supply briefing, hydrologist Cody Moser with the CBRFC said that the forecasted April through July inflow to Lake Powell this year is 1.4 million acre-feet, just 22% of normal and the third-worst on record. That’s down from the March forecast, which predicted 2.3 million acre-feet of inflow. The benchmark for low Powell inflows is 2002, which saw just 964,000 acre-feet of water flow into the reservoir.

The streamflow forecast for the Colorado mainstem in Colorado (known as Division 5 by state water managers) is 38% of normal, according to the National Resources Conservation Service. The Yampa is at 36% of normal; Gunnison is 34% and the San Juan basin in the southwest corner of the state is forecast to have just 26% of normal streamflows this year.

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https://coyotegulch.blog/2026/04/14/march-heat-wave-fueled-worst-end-of-winter-snowpack-on-record-lakepowell-could-see-just-22-of-normal-inflow-heather-sackett-aspenjournalism-org-yampariver-coloradoriver-coriver-aridificatio/