If you live in a dry Western state like Colorado, many small talk exchanges are actually drought-inspired water chants.
Person 1: “We could use the moisture.”
Person 2: “You said it. We sure could use the moisture.”
Finally, in Colorado, the dedication to hydration conversation has paid off.
For many counties around the Centennial State, June 2023 is now the wettest month on record. The National Weather Service has Denver beating the previous high mark by over an inch. The 4.96 inches way back in June of 1882 have been washed away by 6.1 inches in the same month of 2023. That’s all very exciting, but it begs the question: Where does all that water go?
To find the answer I went to Northern Water, a government agency that’s been tracking and wrangling water for nearly a century. Locally, they may be best known as the facilitator of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. It’s a water-diverting behemoth that pumps water from the Colorado River basin on the western side of the Continental Divide to the Big Thompson river basin on the eastern side.
With all the recent precipitation, water is spilling out of reservoirs like Granby Lake and continuing its journey down the Colorado River and to Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Southwestern Colorado. Now we just need to store and conserve because, as folks in dry states know, the “man, we need some moisture,” small talk is never far away.
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