It’s been pretty obvious that we’ve had a rather warm winter this year. We’ve had a few days of snow, but if we happened to even get weather, it was mostly cloudy and rainy. 

It’s no doubt that we’ve had one of our warmest and dryest winters in the valley, with Christmas day being at sixty degrees. We hardly saw snow between November and January, with only a few rain showers here and there. We saw a day of snow in February, but it melted pretty quickly by the end of the day. So, what does that mean for the rest of our mild winter and heading into early spring?

We’re expecting to have a couple more cloudy days throughout the next few weeks, and a chance of rain showers here and there. The Mesa is expected to get a couple more snow showers as we start March as well, both according to the National Weather Service. “I’m excited for it to be warmer, that way I can wear t-shirts and shorts again, even if the winter wasn’t super cold,” said Megan Tillery.

Because of our dry and mild winter, we are expected to get less water drainage from the mountains as summer comes along. This can be really bad, causing droughts here in the valley and farther southwest along the Colorado River. The Mesa has gotten noticeably less snow this year, with Powderhorn’s grand total so far being 80 inches compared to their annual total being around 137 inches according to On The Snow. That’s about 58% less snow than our annual snowfall on the Mesa. “So much of Powderhorn was closed in the early winter, and there’s still some that’s not even open. It’s not fun to ski when it’s muddy.” Said Eliza Pfeffer.

We can hope for more snow these last couple of weeks of winter so our summer will be easier. We can also hope to get a lot of precipitation in the spring to help us not be in a bad drought this year. Other than that, we’re looking at a mild ending to our mild winter.