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Saguache Creek

Division 3 · Water District 26
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Saguache Creek on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 26 · 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 and typically peaks around March 29. Runoff outlook — Saguache Ck nr Saguache : even odds of at least 6 kAF over 06-01 to 09-30 — 33% 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
Cochetopa Pass10020 0.20.0 March 29 (4.8 in)
Sargents Mesa11490 0.00.0 April 13 (11.4 in)

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

90%70%50%30%10%Normal
246811 17

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: 4 parent disagreements, 5 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 13 streams, 9 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

StreamThis site routes it toDWR routes it to
Sawmill Creek the mainstem Blue River
Russell Creek the mainstem La Garita Creek
Sawlog Creek the mainstem Findley Gulch
Hat Springs Creek the mainstem Squaw Creek

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

La Garita Creek (47 mi) · Luders Creek (10 mi) · Fourmile Creek (10 mi) · California Gulch (9 mi) · Squaw Creek (9 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

11,966 water-level measurements across 100 monitored well(s) — 39 alluvial, 25 bedrock — plus 1 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 38 well(s) with enough record for a trend test: 27 declining, 2 rising.

Fastest-declining wellsSettingft / decadeSpanp
NA04201017AAC1 EW-57U unknown -5.53 23 yr 0.0001
NA04201017ADC EW-78C alluvial -4.86 26 yr 0.0002
NA04201017AAC2 EW-57C alluvial -4.0 11 yr 0.0016
NA04300726ADC unknown -3.51 19 yr 0.0005
NA04201007CCC RG18 alluvial -2.78 57 yr 0.0007
NA04300925DDD1 EW-61U alluvial -2.71 11 yr 0.0112
NA04300925DDD2 EW-61C alluvial -2.42 11 yr 0.0236
NA04300815CBB SAG 13 unknown -2.23 52 yr 0.0012

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.