On an unseasonably warm morning in late March, Brian Domonkos parked a government-issued truck at the base of Horseshoe Mountain, a nearly 14,000-foot-tall peak outside Fairplay, Colorado.
A monthly trip each winter to this spot is part of Domonkos’ job as the supervisor of the Colorado Snow Survey, a long-running federal program overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Since 1967, government researchers have tracked snow levels at the site — called a manual snow course — to predict runoff for farmers and water managers.
The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service maintains around 80 similar survey sites in Colorado and more than 1,100 nationwide. Some of those survey sites date back to the 1930s. The methods to record snow haven’t changed much either, relying on some of the same old-fashioned tools put into practice nearly a century ago.
It’s now possible to estimate snowpack using satellites or automated weigh stations. Results from the long-running snow course network, however, have drawn growing interest as a severe drought bears down on the Western U.S. As the oldest dataset, it alone can show whether current conditions are unprecedented or if past dry years might offer an analog to help predict future runoff.
“That’s what we're here to find out — by comparing today to some of the worst years that we’ve seen, such as 1981 and 1977,” Domonkos said.
Domonkos wasn’t hopeful. In a typical year, his team needs backcountry skis to reach the site in late March. This year, he carried his skis up the dirt road, walking past patches of melting snow as temperatures climbed above 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
A rough snow year by any measure
A similar lack of snow is widespread across the Western U.S.
The record-smashing heatwave in late March triggered an early melt-off and shuttered ski resorts weeks ahead of schedule.
In river basins across the region, the amount of water stored as snow is significantly below average, according to the most recent data released by the USDA. Levels in the critical multi-state Upper Colorado River Basin sit at 27% of the median set between 1991 and 2020.
In Colorado, the South Platte Basin, which supplies much of the water to Front Range communities, recovered 36% of its median levels after a snowstorm last week. But statewide snowpack levels sit at an even worse 26%, and the entire state now faces some level of official drought.
Snow course data helps researchers check those kinds of basin-wide estimates against on-the-ground observations. In addition, the federal government has taken measurements on or near April 1 for decades. Even though Colorado’s snowpack usually peaks about a week later, the data logged around the start of April offer continuity across time and provide a clear point of comparison between different years.
Cody Andrews is proud that his property plays a role in the long-running network. The hike up to the site takes researchers past his A-frame cabin, which he said his family finished building in 1963. He’s not sure why his grandma signed up their land for the snow course program, but he’s glad official data is tracking the steady decline in snow over multiple generations.
“My dad and aunts talk about these massive snowstorms that would block them in,” Andrews said. “Overnight, they’d get 20 to 40 inches, and they’d tell me this would happen a couple of times a year. That doesn’t happen anymore. Not even close.”
The old-school art of snow tracking
Metal signs mark the survey site in a patch of forest above the cabin.
Once the team arrived, Mike Ardison, a hydrologic technician for the Colorado Snow Survey, unloaded a green trundle off his back, then unwrapped it to reveal sections of a hollow, aluminum tube. It extends to roughly eight feet long once he fits the pieces together.
A stamp identifies the measuring tool as the property of the Soil Conservation Service, an earlier name for the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Ardison said the mark dates the snow tube to the 1940s.
To measure the snow levels, Domonkos and Ardison work their way along the snow course, dropping the tube at a series of set points along the path. A column of snow captured inside reveals the height, then the pair hang the tube from a spring-powered milk scale to clock the weight. Digital scales might be more accurate, but Ardison said their batteries wouldn’t last long in normal winter temperatures.
“It’s kind of odd how archaic it is, but it still works perfectly well,” Ardison said.
Crouched over a notebook, Domonkos punched a calculator to arrive at a figure for the site. He let out a sigh when he arrived at the final number: 2.2 inches of snow-water equivalent, less than half the previous record low measured on the same date in 1977.
“It's kind of hard to fathom. It's even hard to speak about it,” Domonkos said. “To be talking about the worst year that I've ever seen, we've ever seen in my lifetime? We don't exactly know what's on the horizon, and that's concerning.”
Other measurements taken at snow courses around April 1 were just as alarming. Out of the 64 sites in Colorado with at least 50 years of data, 60 reported either record-low snow levels or tied the lowest on record.
Those results confirm 2026 as the worst year for Colorado snowpack in recorded history, said Russ Schumacher, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and Colorado’s state climatologist.
A lack of historical precedent means it’s harder to fully predict the impact of such low water levels. Schumacher, however, expects reservoir levels to rapidly decline in the summer and fall. Fire risk is harder to predict, but he said major wildfires usually appear in years when the snowpack is lower and melts early.
“We’re maybe in one of these liminal spaces where you can see what’s coming, but it’s not here yet,” Schumacher said. “And, yeah, that’s a challenging situation.”
