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Alamosa La Jara

Division 3 · Water District 21
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Alamosa La Jara on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 21 · clicktap anything for its record

Snowpack — no snow on the ground at 2 SNOTEL sites — normal for the date; the snow year begins in October. Runoff outlook — Alamosa Ck ab Terrace Reservoir: even odds of at least 10 kAF over 06-01 to 09-30 — 34% of a normal season, per NRCS, issued 2026-06-01 — the season’s final; new forecasts begin in January. Runoff outlook — La Jara Ck nr Capulin: even odds of at least 0 kAF over 06-01 to 07-31 — 26% 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
SNOTEL siteElev (ft)SWE (in)Median (in)% of medianTypical peak
Elwood Pass11680 0.2
Lily Pond11070 0.00.0 April 4 (14.8 in)

Alamosa Ck ab Terrace Reservoir — 06-01 to 09-30 volume, thousand acre-feet (chance the volume is AT LEAST this):

90%70%50%30%10%Normal
68101419 30

La Jara Ck nr Capulin — 06-01 to 07-31 volume, thousand acre-feet (chance the volume is AT LEAST this):

90%70%50%30%10%Normal
00011 2

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: 3 parent disagreements, 4 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 5 streams, 2 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

StreamThis site routes it toDWR routes it to
Spring Creek the mainstem Owl Creek
Alamosa River the mainstem Rio Grande
Spring Creek the mainstem Alamosa River

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

San Luis Ditch (10 mi) · Jarosa Creek (7 mi) · Jim Creek (7 mi) · Torsido Creek (6 mi)

Full diagnostic snapshot pending — this district's weekly-style report (system status, active calls, hydrographs, anomaly flags) is produced by the nightly rotation and appears here after its first run. The tabs above are live now.

Groundwater

5,009 water-level measurements across 76 monitored well(s) — 27 alluvial, 33 bedrock — plus 0 administered well(s) reporting metered pumping.

What is being counted

Observation wells and pumping wells are different populations and are never conflated: water levels come from monitored observation wells, and metered pumping comes from administered wells reporting through diversion records. Click any well to chart its own record.

Well map

3D aquifer x-ray

Every aquifer unit as its own head surface, animated through time.

How the surfaces are built, and what they are not

Alluvial water table on top, Denver Basin members (Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe, Laramie–Fox Hills) stacked beneath where measured, interpolated from measured water levels. Units are never mixed; a surface exists only inside its own unit's well coverage, with no extrapolation; thin epochs are suppressed and say why. Vertical scale is exaggerated for readability and z is head elevation in feet. These are measured heads, not a calibrated groundwater model.

Water-table trends

Of 15 well(s) with enough record for a trend test: 7 declining, 0 rising.

Fastest-declining wellsSettingft / decadeSpanp
NA03500907CCC CON 1 unknown -5.79 54 yr 0.0
NA03601001DAD RG67 alluvial -0.65 48 yr 0.0357
NA03400905ABA RG85A alluvial -0.63 44 yr 0.008
NA03500813DCD alluvial -0.46 55 yr 0.0022
NA03601026CBB alluvial -0.45 56 yr 0.0009
NA03501016CBB alluvial -0.39 57 yr 0.0001
NA03501006DDD RG74 alluvial -0.29 45 yr 0.0014

Stream corridors — the surface connection

Where a reach's gain or loss has shifted, the wells within two miles of its anchoring gage and what their water table did over the same era.

How the corridor is assembled

For each reach whose gain/loss has shifted (Trends tab): the wells within 2 miles of its anchoring gage, their pooled water-table history over the same era, and an advisory Glover screen of lagged stream depletion from nearby metered pumping. v1 proximity = distance to the reach's anchoring gage; segment-based reach join is a flagged upgrade.

SOUTH CHANNEL NORTON DRAIN DITCH NEAR LA SAUSES: 0 alluvial well(s) nearby

Wells labeled by administrative world before anything else is said about them: tributary alluvium participates in the priority system; designated-basin and Denver Basin bedrock aquifers are governed differently and are excluded from stream-connection reasoning. Read bedrock declines differently too: deep bedrock aquifers recharge negligibly on human timescales, so a falling bedrock level is storage mining — effectively permanent — not a drought response that a wet year undoes. All screens advisory.