Rain added 20,000 acre-feet to McPhee, water manager says

The storms that washed out bridges and forced evacuations across the Four Corners last week also put a dent in the drought, and the clearest local measure of it is in McPhee Reservoir.

Ken Curtis, general manager of the Dolores Water Conservancy District, told KSJD the reservoir gained about 20,000 acre-feet from the rain. It is still far from full — it was extremely low before September — but the rise was sharp partly because irrigation companies had already shut down early for the season, so the inflow stayed in the reservoir.

The Dolores River itself went from about 132 cubic feet per second late in the summer to a peak of 6,140 cubic feet per second early Saturday morning. Curtis said SnoTel sensors in the mountains are reading moisture at five to six times the normal October level, and that ground moisture is much better than in the past couple of years — “a great start,” in his words.

He was careful about what that does and does not mean. The worst flooding was along the San Juan and Animas rivers, and he said those basins did not get much direct rain; the water came off the mountains. Forecasts of a strong El Niño this winter are encouraging, he said, but the region is “not out of the woods yet” — storms can still track around the Four Corners, and next summer can still turn hot and dry. What the winter needs now, he said, is cold: the mountains have already lost a lot of the snow that fell, and snowpack has to stay put until spring to be worth anything.

Lake Powell, which has been at historic lows, is about 7.1 feet higher than it was two weeks ago, according to figures KSJD cited from the Salt Lake Tribune.

The Current’s earlier reporting on the local gauges is here. This brief is based on KSJD’s local newscast of October 27, which interviewed Curtis.