As temperatures heat up a snowpack that's two to three times its normal depth, flooding is "likely" in parts of the high country, according to the Intermountain West Climate Summary released by regional forecasters and climatologist last week.

In Colorado, more than two dozen ditches or pipelines provide nearly 500,000 acre-feet of water annually by transmountain diversions. By basin, the major importers are the: South Platte River Basin, Arkansas River Basin, and Rio Grande River Basin.

It falls freely from the sky, is sold in stores and daily sustains all life on the planet. We clean with it, drink it and flush it down the toilet. We grow food in it. We power homes and factories with it. We play in it and marvel at the wild creatures who depend on it. Yet while water appears to be abundant, there is only a certain amount that can be used.

In nearly every Water Court case in the Arkansas River basin, the state Division of Water Resources finds itself in court. Usually, the state is an objector, attempting to make sure the water rights of other water users are not injured when a new application for how water is used is processed by the court.

For the second year in a row, heavy winds out of the south and west have coated the mountains – with a layer of reddish-brown dust from the deserts of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. The dust absorbs heat from sunlight and melts the snow more quickly. Snowpack in the Arkansas River Basin, 107 percent of average three weeks ago, was at 87 percent Friday.

A new chairman and a new board member were welcomed Tuesday by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, meeting at the Pueblo Convention Center. Geoff Blakeslee, a Steamboat Springs ranch operator, was elected chairman, and Eric Wilkinson, executive director of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District was elected vice-chairman.

The state water board is looking at a few big water projects, new ways to share water and conservation as ways to address the impending gap between future municipal water supplies and identified projects to meet the gap.