{"id":112498,"date":"2015-05-13T19:22:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T01:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/2015-forecast-mcphee-wont-fill-2\/"},"modified":"2015-05-13T19:22:05","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T01:22:05","slug":"2015-forecast-mcphee-wont-fill-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/2015-forecast-mcphee-wont-fill-2\/","title":{"rendered":"2015 forecast: McPhee won’t fill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Tony
Tony Littlejohn and Tom Hafnor lift their canoe up to place on top of their car after a trip from the West Fork down the river to Dolores.<\/span>Sam Green\/Dolores Star<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

While it has been speculated for some time, the official McPhee Reservoir Operating Plan released May 1 made it official \u2013 McPhee Reservoir won\u2019t fill this year.<\/p>\n

In fact, the forecast for the year shows the lake will be about 40 feet shy of the full line.<\/p>\n

When full, the lake reaches an elevation of 6,924 feet. The reservoir, according to the forecast, will be 40 feet shy, at 6,884.<\/p>\n

While the storms this week have been helpful, Ken Curtis with the Dolores Water Conservancy District said they haven\u2019t changed the forecast.<\/p>\n

And because the reservoir won\u2019t fill, there will be no controlled release downstream, which means rafters won\u2019t get to run this world-class stretch of river.<\/p>\n

Curtis also said those north of the Montezuma Valley Irrigation district, such as Dove Creek and Yellow Jacket, will likely only get about 40 percent of their allotment of water.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be a truncated season, by about half,\u201d Curtis said.<\/p>\n

There are about 140 different family operations affected by the short season, as well as irrigators in Dove Creek.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole town of Dove Creek gets a shortened season,\u201d Curtis said.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t hurt to hope for more rain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe storms were helpful, but it is hard to put a specific number of them,\u201d Curtis said. \u201cThe storms were good, but until you see tho whole month of moisture, it could dry out. If it stays in this pattern, (the outlook) could improve a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, the warm temperatures meant that the recent snow and rain went into the ground, not into the river.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only place, however we have snow is up high,\u201d Curtis said.<\/p>\n

Those in Dolores won\u2019t likely see the reservoir get to the bridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t see it creep around the corner much,\u201d Curtis said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, rafters and kayakers have been enjoying an increased river flow on the upper Dolores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rafters left high and dry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6363],"tags":[188,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-112498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ds-news","tag-dolores-star","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112498"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=112498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}