Farmers Union Operations

Thursday, May 26, 2022

We are switching over to the South ditches tomorrow and we will exhaust the remaining reservoir water supply we have left the next 7 days. River flows continue to fall at Del Norte. The Rio Grande Canal started a reservoir run this week as well so that will help us deliver our water to the headgate at the river. Unless we get some rain later this summer to bring us back into priority, it looks like the total water diverted in the canal this year will be very close to last year.

Friday, May 20, 2022

There is 120.1 cfs being diverted in to the canal today, (20.1 river and 100.0 Reservoir native). Chuck will begin moving water to the north today, for a total of five days. Have a great weekend!

Thursday, May 19, 2022

We have 120.6 cfs available river water and 150.0 cfs in Reservoir native storage releases, for a total diversion of 270.6 cfs today. We will continue making deliveries to the Eubank, Hiline and South Laterals today, and move to the north end of the system on Friday, May 20th.

Sunday, May 8, 2022

The State landed on 03-24F this morning and we are good for 308.0cfs in the canal. The guys will start moving some water south today to build up the forebays to begin flushing the south laterals tomorrow. Inflow jumped again at the reservoir, for an average of 1240-1250.0 cfs, jumping the over legal +1000.0af, so I am shooting for a release at the reservoir of around 1500.0cfs today. Have a great Mother's Day!

Rob

Friday, May 6, 2022

The river isn't panning out like they thought it would, and they have dropped the curtailment. That being said, we may not have much of a run with only 9400.0 acre feet of storage in the reservoir, but I believe everyone knew that coming in. I saw a big increase in storage over night so we are no doubt seeing increased runoff up high. I am opening up the release to about 725-750.0cfs today. We are hoping the warm temps forecasted over the weekend will give us more river water in the canal by Monday and plan to send water south at that time. The north end will have it over the weekend. Hope all is well and good luck with planting!

Rob

Saturday, April 30, 2022

Greetings all,
The canal came into priority for 140.2 cfs yesterday. We are going to flush the Central Canal today and work north over the next three days.
Rob

Friday, April 22, 2022

They landed on Priority 361-A today, so we are good for 140.2 cfs. If the wind comes up as bad as it is forecasted, we will have plenty of escape routes to take it - east - if need be. Inflow to the reservoir almost hit 400.0 cfs overnight.

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

We fell out of priority and lost our river water on April 24th. Following is an update from the CODOS:

CODOS UPDATE APRIL 25, 2022: MORE DUST (#7) WITH PRECIP, WARM UP THRU THE WEEK:

GREETINGS FROM SILVERTON,

The high winds just don’t let up. Dust was prevalent throughout Colorado and the Southwest states last week and on Friday (April 22) more dust hit the Colorado snowpack (with 100mph winds at Red Mt), falling on existing surface dust before being covered by modest snowfall in the San Juan’s and a bit more towards Central and Northern Colorado. This marks dust event #7 in our record keeping. There are now at least three combined dust layers re-emerging in Southern Colorado and elsewhere depending on snowfall amounts over the weekend. In one day measured albedo from radiation sensors at Swamp Angel dropped from 93% to 76%. The result will be streamflow on the rebound. Given the weather forecast and heavy dust at/near surface we are looking at early full snow ablation again this year. Once plants and soils are exposed, the warm/dry/windy conditions will rob water and dry out the landscape.