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Trinchera Creek

Division 3 · Water District 35
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Trinchera Creek on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 35 · clicktap anything for its record

Snowpack — no snow on the ground at 3 SNOTEL sites — normal for the date; the snow year begins in October and typically peaks around March 9. Runoff outlook — Trinchera Ck ab Turners Ranch: even odds of at least 1 kAF over 06-01 to 09-30 — 21% of a normal season, per NRCS, issued 2026-06-01 — the season’s final; new forecasts begin in January. Runoff outlook — Sangre de Cristo Ck : even odds of at least 1 kAF over 06-01 to 09-30 — 27% of a normal season, per NRCS, issued 2026-06-01 — the season’s final; new forecasts begin in January. Runoff outlook — Ute Ck nr Fort Garland: even odds of at least 2 kAF over 06-01 to 09-30 — 25% 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
Medano Pass9650 0.00.0 March 9 (7.4 in)
Trinchera10860 0.10.0 April 5 (11.2 in)
Ute Creek10720 0.00.0 April 4 (12.4 in)

Trinchera Ck ab Turners Ranch — 06-01 to 09-30 volume, thousand acre-feet (chance the volume is AT LEAST this):

90%70%50%30%10%Normal
01122 6

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

90%70%50%30%10%Normal
01123 4

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

90%70%50%30%10%Normal
01234 7

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: 11 parent disagreements (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 18 streams, 7 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

StreamThis site routes it toDWR routes it to
Sand Creek the mainstem Arena Creek
Big Spring Creek the mainstem nan
Medano Creek the mainstem nan
North Zapata Creek the mainstem nan
South Zapata Creek the mainstem nan
Urraca Creek the mainstem nan
Pioneer Creek the mainstem nan
Blanca Creek the mainstem nan

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.

Drought

Right now

This is the 3rd-driest week 27 in 104 years of record at UTE CREEK NEAR FORT GARLAND, CO (as of 2026-06-29; this week’s flow sits at the 3rd percentile for the date). On this week’s US Drought Monitor, Alamosa County is 75% in D4 exceptional drought (2026-08-25). The law agrees: the most senior active call leaves 100% 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 UTE CREEK NEAR FORT GARLAND, 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.

The Drought Monitor’s view since 2000

Mean share of area in each class across Alamosa, Costilla, Saguache counties — 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 2015 — 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 (376 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 percentileRecovery
the 2020-22 drought 2020-08-24 → 2021-02-15 25 21st (2020-10-19) 7 weeks
the 2018 drought 2018-06-18 → 2019-07-29 58 5th (2018-08-27) 0 weeks
the 2012-13 drought 2012-07-23 → 2013-11-11 68 12th (2013-03-25) 0 weeks
unnamed dry spell 2006-06-19 → 2006-11-20 22 23rd (2006-08-14) 0 weeks
the 2002 drought 2001-12-03 → 2003-09-01 91 3rd (2002-10-14) 5 weeks
unnamed dry spell 2000-06-26 → 2001-05-28 48 12th (2000-10-16) 11 weeks
unnamed dry spell 1989-10-09 → 1990-07-30 42 22nd (1990-04-09) 7 weeks
the 1981 drought 1981-03-16 → 1981-11-02 33 22nd (1981-07-06) 47 weeks
unnamed dry spell 1978-09-25 → 1979-06-25 39 11th (1979-02-05) 0 weeks
the 1977 drought 1977-06-13 → 1978-09-04 64 13th (1978-02-20) 42 weeks
the 1977 drought 1976-03-08 → 1976-08-23 24 24th (1976-05-03) 11 weeks
unnamed dry spell 1974-02-11 → 1975-07-28 76 11th (1975-02-03) 0 weeks
unnamed dry spell 1972-07-24 → 1973-03-12 33 12th (1972-10-09) 14 weeks
unnamed dry spell 1971-08-16 → 1972-01-31 24 21st (1971-10-11) 6 weeks

Detected mechanically: the 26-week smoothed percentile below the 30th for at least 20 weeks; recovered on regaining the 50th. 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.

What drought has cost here

Since 2003, federal crop insurance has paid $48,915 in drought-caused claims across Alamosa, Costilla, Saguache counties — 0.0% of all insured crop losses there. The worst year was 2015 ($30,308).

USDA crop-insurance indemnities where the recorded cause of loss is drought, summed over the counties this district's gages sit in. Counties overlap water districts imperfectly, and insured-crop claims are a floor on drought damage, not a total. Source: USDA RMA cause-of-loss files.

When this basin claimed its water

Every bar is a year’s new appropriations (598 rights across 104 years of shared record), colored by that year’s wetness from the barcode above. Here the correlation is -0.11 — 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.