Since Valentine’s Day, several storms have brought six straight powder days and up to 50 inches of snow to some Colorado ski resorts — having varied but mostly positive impacts on the state’s snowpack. 

“This storm brought quite a lot of snow to all the mountain ranges,” said Russ Schumacher, Colorado’s state climatologist and director of the Colorado Climate Center. “In parts of the state, it really helped out a lot, and in other places, they are going to need a lot more to catch up.”

The news is the best for Colorado’s northern mountains, where most resorts were sitting just below the snowpack average heading into the Presidents Day weekend. Now, most of the region’s resorts are sitting at or slightly above normal. 

For example, 50 inches of recent snowfall have brought Vail Mountain from 81% to 103% of its 30-year normal, according to OpenSnow.com. Vail reportedly received the most snow in the state between Feb. 14 and 19. 

At the Winter Park Resort, 46 snow inches fell at the mountain, bringing the resort’s snowpack to 114% of the 30-year median.  

“There’s not too much to be concerned about up in the northern mountains,” Schumacher said. 

However, the further south and west you go, the less positive the outlook is, which is consistent with what Colorado typically sees in a La Nina winter, Schumacher noted. 

“It was good snow (down in the San Juans, on the Grand Mesa and in the Elk Mountains), but not nearly enough to make up the big deficits that were there from earlier in the winter,” Schumacher said. “One good storm in February helped, but it wasn’t a drought buster or season changer. You expect a lot more storms than that during this time of year.”

With snow accumulation typically highest from January through March, it is a critical time for Colorado’s snowpack, Schumacher said. 

“This is the time of year when we need to have the storms coming more frequently to get the snowpack up where you want it to be,” he added. “We need the storms to keep coming to get the snowpack up and to get the water supply looking a little bit better.”

Colorado’s mountain snowpack acts as a natural reservoir, providing the vast majority of the state’s water supply for municipal use, agriculture, recreation and more. 

Following the series of storms, current warm, dry weather will continue to mostly draw concerns in the southern mountains and the Colorado River Basin, Schumacher said. 

“The streamflow forecasts for the Colorado River Basin were not well before this storm. They were looking quite bad,” he said. “This storm will certainly help with the water supply forecast. But then now we’ll have another 10 days, maybe more, of dryness.”

As of Feb. 18, the water supply in the Colorado River Headwaters was just above the 30-year normal in the basins around Kremmling and Eagle. Further west, in the Roaring Fork basin and near Glenwood Springs, the supply was still below average. 

While it’s hard to predict what March will bring, the month will be important to overall snowpack accumulation, as well. 

“If the pattern does turn back around to be more active, you know there’s still a chance to catch up on some of those things,” Schumacher said. “It’s a little too early to say how that’s going to shake out (for the remainder of the season) … and there’s some hints that maybe it starts to get a little more active into early March again, but that is a little ways off.”