Many visitors feel right at home in these recent spring-like conditions, but the 40s and 50s could spell trouble for those who live here.

Early in February, we had a stint of very warm weather that made many antsy for spring to start, but not so fast! That series of warm days was the earliest many weather stations across the county had recorded 50-degree temperatures, and at some of those locations, temperatures did not fall below freezing for multiple nights.

The extended dry and warm period that lasted from mid-January to mid-February moved the snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin from slightly below average to the bottom 20th percentile of all recorded years since 1986.

---

---

Thankfully, the more recent turbulent periods of weather recovered the snowpack to average for this time of year as of March 9. However, as we continue this warm pattern, we will see our snowpack dwindle once again.

In terms of what we can expect weather-wise going into spring, what does this pattern mean?

---

---

A healthy snowpack is important for springtime precipitation, as it is one of the drivers of those afternoon showers and storms that we experience through mid-May. This is due to warmer temperatures melting the snow at higher elevations, causing evaporation and forming clouds. Then our mountains act as a natural lifting force that forms showers.

After May, we typically rely on monsoonal flow, a stream of air that brings moisture from the Gulf of California, to provide most of our moisture. If we continue to see heat stress on our snowpack, we could see a premature collapse of snowpack-driven precipitation going into the summer months.

This translates to an earlier switch to relying on monsoonal flow for our precipitation.

Last year, we had a decent monsoon season along with one of the healthiest snowpacks in decades, providing ample safeguards to keep us out of dire fire danger for the better part of the season. Unfortunately, all it took was a three-week period of drier conditions to launch us from 60% of the county being in “abnormally dry” conditions to having some of the worst drought conditions since 2020.

A study backed by NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System that was released in November 2024 shows that most droughts over the past 25 years have transitioned from being caused by a lack of precipitation to excessive heat stress on the environment. This means the cause of drought risk is no longer due to long stretches of no precipitation; it is now driven by how abnormally warm the environment is during these dry periods.

Heat records already being broken at home in 2025 do not provide optimistic signals heading into the back-half of a season, when we may rely on monsoonal flow more than usual. While we could see another strong monsoon season, fueled by unusually warm sea temperatures in the Gulf of California, monsoonal flow has a lot of factors that could cause it to collapse and leave us without the precipitation we need.

In more hopeful news, a more turbulent pattern is expected to continue through at least mid-March, which should bring much-needed moisture to our mountain snowpack.

JP Connick is a weather enthusiast who lives in Granby and runs the Grand County Weather Facebook page. Contact him at jpconnick4@gmail.com.