← All basins

Huerfano River

Division 2 · Water District 79 · As of 2026-10-15 05:39 MDT · 2 days ago

Who may take water from the Huerfano River, who is calling for it today, and how it is running, compiled from Colorado Division of Water Resources records. Click anything on the map for its record.

Live · machine-built

Huerfano River on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 79 · clicktap anything for its record

Browse this district’s ditches, gages, reservoirs, wells and springs as a list.

27% of normal flow, week of 2026-09-21
1 call the record places on it, 20 unsettled

The Huerfano R is well below normal for late September -- 27% of normal flow. 1 call stands against it right now; the most senior right calling dates to 1874. DWR's statements do not settle whether 20 more calls reach it.

Snow and runoff

Source Independent agency measurement · fetched 2026-10-16 · verify at NRCS report generator ↗ Source Our computation, scored against a reference · NRCS forecast, graded here against the gage record

Snow-water equivalent, WY2027

SNOTEL siteElev (ft)SWE (in)Median (in)% of medianTypical peak

NRCS SNOTEL, daily. Sites are assigned to the district whose boundary contains them — the snow that feeds this district can also sit in a neighboring headwater district.

Runoff outlook — Huerfano R nr Redwing

NRCS's final issue (2026-06-01) calls it even odds that at least 3 kAF arrives over 06-01 to 09-30 — 32% of a normal season; almost certainly at least 1, probably not more than 5. Our own record at this gage shows 2 kAF actually delivered. New forecasts begin in January. How to read these numbers →

The record-adjusted April benchmark

NRCS’s April issue (2026-04-01) called even odds at 4 kAF over 04-01 to 09-30. Re-anchoring that number on this river’s own history — how its April issues have verified, the winter’s baseflow, and the district’s April 1 snowpack — moves it to 3 kAF. The river delivered 4 kAF.

Computed by this site — not an NRCS number, and shown only because it earned it: replayed over 65 past seasons here (1978–2025), never seeing the year it predicts, the adjustment cut the typical April miss from 26% to 20%. At points where it does not beat NRCS, no adjusted number appears. Coefficients are frozen each August; the model never changes mid-season. Method and honest limits →

90% chance of at least70% chance of at least50% chance of at least30% chance of at least10% chance of at leastNormalObserved
12345 9 2

How good are these forecasts here? (1976–2025)

Grading every April issue against what the river then delivered, measured at this gage’s own record — 40 seasons: the median miss of the 50% forecast is 24%, with a low bias of 1%, and the observed volume landed inside the stated 10–90% band 83% of the time (a calibrated forecast would say 80%).

Computed by this site: NRCS's archived April issues (their period as issued each year) against the observed volume in DWR’s published record; years with under 90% daily coverage are dropped, not summed. A grade of the forecast, never of the forecasters — these are hard rivers. How this point ranks among every graded Colorado forecast point →

Drought

Source Our computation, no independent reference · computed here from the screened DWR record Source Independent agency measurement · fetched 2026-10-13 · verify at U.S. Drought Monitor ↗

Right now

This is the 26th-driest week 39 in 95 years of record at HUERFANO R AT MANZANARES XING, NR REDWING, CO. (as of 2026-09-21; this week’s flow sits at the 27th percentileRank against the record: a river at its 5th percentile is lower than it was in 95 of the past 100 years on this same date. for the date). On this week’s US Drought Monitor, Huerfano County is 98% in D2 severe drought (2026-10-13). The law agrees: the most senior active call leaves 80% of this district’s decreed flow rights junior to the calling right this week.

Every year since 1923, week by week

Each thin row is a year at HUERFANO R AT MANZANARES XING, NR REDWING, CO.; each cell is one week’s flow ranked against the same calendar week of every other year — warm means dry for the date, blue wet, so seasonality cancels and droughts appear as warm bands. Gaps are missing record, never a dry river. Click a year to reconstruct it on the Historical tab.

This year against its analogs

Over the 39 weeks recorded so far, 2026’s weekly trace most resembles 2018 (mean gap 11.5 percentile points; next closest 1974 (17.1), 1950 (17.3)). The analog’s remainder is drawn as context — its ending is what happened to it, not a forecast for this year.

The Drought Monitor’s view since 2000

Mean share of area in each class across Huerfano county — the counties this district’s gages sit in, which overlap the district imperfectly. The Drought Monitor weighs soils, vegetation and local reports; it is CONTEXT beside the river’s own record above, not the water-rights picture.

The law’s own drought gauge

When water runs short, administration answers: calls reach further back in time, and more decreed rights go junior to the calling right. This is that response, weekly since 2005 — the share of this district’s decreed flow rights junior to the most senior active call. Watch it spike in the named droughts below, and linger after the river recovers.

Computed from DWR’s call record (777 calls touching this district) against the district’s rights index. Scoping is deliberately coarse — a call’s own district, or districts named in its comments — and this is administration’s RESPONSE, not a per-structure verdict (each dossier’s curtailment card does that, with stream miles). A deepening call can also reflect growing demand, not only shrinking supply.

This basin’s droughts, by its own record

DroughtSpanWeeks Trough percentileFlows recovered Water table back
unnamed dry spell 2023-11-27 → 2024-07-29 35 22nd (2024-01-08) 5 weeks —
the 2020-22 drought 2021-11-22 → 2022-10-10 46 22nd (2022-07-18) 4 weeks —
the 2020-22 drought 2020-06-08 → 2021-07-26 59 11th (2020-09-07) 67 weeks —
the 2018 drought 2018-07-16 → 2019-08-19 57 5th (2018-10-22) 0 weeks —
the 2012-13 drought 2014-03-24 → 2014-10-06 28 22nd (2014-04-28) 100 weeks —
the 2012-13 drought 2012-07-02 → 2013-12-02 74 4th (2013-04-15) 144 weeks —
the 2012-13 drought 2011-06-20 → 2012-06-18 52 18th (2011-09-05) 220 weeks —
unnamed dry spell 2009-11-30 → 2010-06-14 28 20th (2010-01-18) 14 weeks —
unnamed dry spell 2007-02-26 → 2007-07-30 22 20th (2007-04-23) 3 weeks —
unnamed dry spell 2006-06-12 → 2006-12-18 27 21st (2006-08-14) 35 weeks —
the 2002 drought 2002-03-04 → 2003-09-08 79 4th (2002-10-21) 63 weeks —
unnamed dry spell 2000-09-04 → 2001-06-11 40 14th (2000-11-27) 5 weeks —
unnamed dry spell 1996-12-02 → 1997-05-12 23 20th (1997-01-06) 4 weeks —
unnamed dry spell 1977-02-07 → 1979-07-30 129 8th (1979-01-22) 0 weeks —

Detected mechanically: the 26-week smoothed percentile below the 30th for at least 20 weeks; recovered on regaining the 50th. The water-table clock compares each monitoring well against its own pre-drought median (the 3 years before onset) and dates the year the median well got back — the aquifer remembers longest, and “still below” is a finding, not a gap. The knobs are stated because the episode list depends on them — a different reasonable choice merges or splits episodes at the edges. Names are attached where an episode overlaps a drought Colorado already talks about.

When this basin claimed its water

Every bar is a year’s new appropriations (627 rights across 98 years of shared record), colored by that year’s wetness from the barcode above. Here the correlation is -0.06 — essentially no wet-dry pattern; here, law and settlement set the pace, not the weather. Across the state both behaviors exist: ephemeral southwest basins file after wet demonstrations, transbasin-source basins under drought — and the biggest statewide filing waves sat in the 1950s drought and after 2002, not in the wet 1980s–90s.

Appropriation dates are the CLAIMED initiation of a right, not the courthouse filing date; the record is survivor-biased (abandoned claims are absent, so failed dry-era scrambles are undercounted); and the big 1960s and 2000s spikes sit on legal events — the pre-1969-Act adjudication era and 2000s legislation — not on weather. A correlation here is a description, never a cause.

New to how a dry winter becomes a call on the river? Anatomy of a drought walks the chain in four minutes — snow to rivers to reservoirs to calls to the water table.

Runoff outlook — Huerfano R nr Redwing: even odds of at least 3 kAF over 06-01 to 09-30 — 32% of a normal season, per NRCS, issued 2026-06-01 — the season’s final; new forecasts begin in January. Full snow & runoff picture — charts, forecast history and how the forecasts have verified →

Sites, exceedance bands and sources

Huerfano R nr Redwing — 06-01 to 09-30 volume, thousand acre-feet (chance the volume is AT LEAST this):

90%70%50%30%10%Normal
12345 9

Snow-water equivalent and medians (1991–2020) from NRCS SNOTEL; seasonal volume forecasts from the NRCS National Water and Climate Center. Sites and forecast points are assigned to the district whose boundary contains them — snowpack that feeds this district can also sit in a neighboring headwater district. Toggle the Snow chip on the map above to see the sites.

Topology cross-check: 7 parent disagreements, 12 sizable streams not on this network (vs DWR's route framework — under review)

This flow network was built mechanically; DWR's Source Water Route Framework disagrees with it in the places below. Each row is a question a human reviewer has not yet answered — not an error verdict. Checked 24 streams, 17 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

StreamThis site routes it toDWR routes it to
Custer Creek the mainstem Turkey Creek
Maes Creek the mainstem Turkey Creek
Bruff Creek the mainstem Muddy Creek
Dutch Creek the mainstem South Fork Huerfano River
Yellowstone Creek (AKA Piedras Amerillas Creek) the mainstem South Oak Creek
Rio Alto Creek the mainstem Muddy Creek
West Turkey Creek the mainstem Custer Creek

Sizable streams DWR maps here that this network does not carry:

Muddy Creek (19 mi) · Dog Springs Arroyo (19 mi) · Greasewood Arroyo (14 mi) · Butte Creek (9 mi) · Manzanares Creek (9 mi) · Mustang Arroyo (7 mi) · Ojo de Alamo Arroyo (7 mi) · Pine Arroyo (6 mi)

Something wrong on this page? Tell us →