Click a sub-basin in the map to load that basin's SNOTEL snow water equivalent time series in the chart below.
How To Use This Chart
Sub-basin map
The map shows the major Upper Colorado River Basin sub-basins. Click any sub-basin to load that basin’s SNOTEL snow water equivalent series and yearly comparison below.
Snow water equivalent by water year
The upper chart shows snow water equivalent for the selected sub-basin by WATER YEAR. The value at any point is that sub-basin’s snowpack water content on that day in the season for that water year.
Water-year day comparison
Hover over any water-year day in the upper chart to inspect that point in the season. The readouts update for the hovered day, and the lower chart updates with the value for each water year on that same day.
Controls
Use the series controls to highlight years, compare the current year with close water-year analogs, or hide inactive series.
SNOTEL Snow Water Equivalent
Data Source
The data for this chart is sourced from SNOTEL basin snow water equivalent data published by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service through the National Water and Climate Center and NWCC basin plots.1
The explorer uses the following Upper Colorado River Basin HUC6 sub-basin pages at NWCC:
- Colorado Headwaters
- Gunnison
- Upper Colorado-Dolores
- Upper Green
- White-Yampa
- Lower Green
- Upper Colorado-Dirty Devil
- Upper San Juan
- Lower San Juan
NWCC does not currently publish a matching WTEQ basin plot for the Great Divide Closed Basin, so it is not included in the explorer dataset.2
- 1
National Water and Climate Center - Snow and Climate Monitoring - https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/data-and-reports/snow-and-climate-monitoring-predefined-reports-and-maps ↩︎
- 2
Our latest fetch of the NWCC HUC6 WTEQ page for Great Divide Closed Basin returned
404, so the chart currently includes only the sub-basins for which NWCC publishes a basin plot. ↩︎