False confidence

Denver is giddy after a wet May. Streams in the foothills are swollen with snowmelt, and the water level at Clear Creek White Water Park in Golden is "dangerously high," to kayakers' delight. The rolling prairie is impossibly lush, and one need not use a sprinkler to keep the lawn green.

Denver Water announced a few months ago it would implement Stage 2 drought restrictions, before an exceptionally snowy April brought many river basins close to 100%, in terms of average snowpack. Cranky water planners must have been too eager to clamp down on lawn-watering, and did so prematurely.

Photo credit: http://ow.ly/mfcgd

Yet within one week of temperatures reaching 90 degrees, browns spots have begun marring lawns across the city. The green foothills will soon return to brown, when summer trades in the rain for unadulterated heat. And the reservoirs, which are only slightly less empty than we originally predicted they would be this spring, will continue to diminish.

A near-average snowpack is not a silver bullet for our water supply. What Colorado needs is an above-average snowpack, just to make up for last summer's drought and depleted reservoirs. And then we need even more snow, to melt into water we are legally obligated to send Nevada, Arizona, and California, in accordance with the Colorado River Compact. And then we need even more snow, to fuel the population growth Colorado will see in the next few decades. And more snow on top of that, to negate the 500,000 acre-foot gap projected for 2050.

A few more raindrops in May just aren't going to cut it.