Mid February water review

Tis Valentine's Day and tis a wonderful time to review the water conditions in Arizona.  Let's start way down south.  Sabino Creek outside Tucson is running 279 cfs.  That doesn't sound like much but that would be incredibly beautiful water in Sabino Canyon, especially since the temps are in the upper 60's right now with clear spring blue skies.  WOW, that's about as good as it gets in Tucson in February.  When I moved to Arizona, I arrived on Valentine's Day of 1979.  It wwas a big water year similar to this one and every little creek and wash was running.  HA!  I thought that's the way it ALWAYS was.  Dummie!

The Upper Gila river has a real nice baseflow in it right now.  Readings vary from 400 to 500+ cfs.  This will be one of the few years that will be a great boating season. 

The Salt and Verde have tightened up.  The day stretch of the Salt is running a little less than 500 while the White Bridge to Beasley on the Verde is running near 700, a great canoe level.  The Verde into Horseshoe is less than 1000 and the Salt into Roosevelt is on the high side of 800.

The Little Colorado out at Grand Falls is probably running about 250 cfs. 

What's happening with the snowpack?  Baker Butte Summit has over 5 feet of snow with a 19 inch water equivalent. Happy Jack is a whisker shy of 4 feet with 14 inches of water content.  The two Baldy sites in the Upper Salt are running about 54 inches of snow with a 13 inch water content.  The real surprises are White Horse Lake and Fry in the Verde.  White Horse has 3 feet of snow and fully one third of that is water--12 inches! That's HUGE for White Horse.  Why?   Well, it means the Upper Verde below Sycamore Canyon is going to run great this spring--really, really GREAT!  The Fry site has about 4 feet of snow and 15 inches of water.  That's an indicator of how nice Oak Creek will run.  Chances are all of the Verde's tributaries will be boatable this year for a protracted period of time.

This warm weather will bring off the low snow--that's what the Sabino readings are telling us.  The high snow is still in no danger of going anyplace--it's still too cold at night. Even though Baldy's daytime temp has been in the mid-40's, teh overnight lows have been dropping down to 10-12 degrees.  Nah, that particular snowpack ain't goin' nowhere!

I'd reckon the water will start showing a steady rise with this heat wave in Arizona, mostly due to low elevation snow.  We will keep a close eye on how the snowpack behaves and probably do weekly updates from here on out until it's obvious that the snow is mostly gone.