SNOTEL Stations

Ratio of SWE to Winter Precipitation

Drought type Min Max Median
dry 0.26 0.96 0.75
warm 0.23 0.76 0.62
nodrought 0.45 0.97 0.77

Take home: Using criteria from Harpold et al. (2017) (drought if peak is less than long-term mean) results in drought (warm or dry) for 55% of station-years. The ratio of SWE to winter precipitation alone cannot be used to determine type or occurrence of drought. This method excludes high snow years

Percentiles

WRF-SM for Upper Colorado

year ctl pgw delta perc.diff
2001 8.9 7.0 -1.8 -20.7
2002 6.4 5.8 -0.5 -8.3
2003 10.0 8.3 -1.7 -17.3
2004 12.3 11.3 -1.0 -7.8
2005 15.2 12.1 -3.1 -20.7
2006 10.9 7.8 -3.1 -28.4
2007 10.1 6.8 -3.4 -33.1
2008 15.6 14.7 -1.0 -6.1
2009 12.6 11.6 -1.0 -7.8
2010 13.4 13.1 -0.3 -2.4
2011 17.6 14.1 -3.5 -19.9
2012 6.6 6.1 -0.4 -6.8
2013 9.4 7.1 -2.3 -24.2