With persistent drought conditions across Colorado and low reservoir levels in the southwest, water resource managers are looking at a potentially long and arid summer. Following a dry 2012, the warmest year on record, reservoir levels were already on the low side. Reservoir storage exactly one year ago sat at 104 percent of average, which helped the area get through late summer shortages.

The onslaught of wild weather that has battered the USA in recent years — from Hurricane Sandy and deadly tornado outbreaks to extremes of drought and floods -- looks to be part of a "new normal" for weather patterns in the U.S., new National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini said Wednesday.

If storms don’t add to the current snowpack at Purgatory soon, winter 2012-13 could mark the fifth consecutive decline in total seasonal snowfall since 2007-08 when 290 inches fell. In the preceding four years, Purgatory received respectively, 265, 233, 218 and 204 inches. So far this year, 186 inches have been recorded, 18 inches shy of the 2011-12 mark.

When a wildfire suddenly broke out last Friday in Lory State Park, west of Fort Collins, Coloradans breathed an anxious, collective sigh: not again. The early season blaze stirred unpleasant memories of last year's trying fire season, which scorched about 385,000 acres in the state, according to the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control.

Climate change remains controversial, with a significant number of Americans saying it's exaggerated and many lawmakers disputing the science. At the same time, climate scientists are nearly unanimous and have found new evidence that it has already begun, with the past decade the warmest ever recorded for global temperatures.

Colorado is entering its third year of drought, with the southeast part of the state rated in the most dangerous level of D-4, or extreme drought conditions.

With neither El Niño or a La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, long-range weather forecasters have been struggling to develop confidence in their outlook for the coming spring season — a critical time for much of the West in terms of getting some relief from drought conditions.