And so we begin...

Many of our mountain-area stream gages are frozen or too hard to get to, which makes it difficult to spot the first signs of spring snowmelt.

However, one of our favorite year-round gages has started to show sure signs of melting snow: the gage on Middle Boulder Creek at Nederland.

You can see from the gage image here that the jagged, mostly flatlined trace gave way to a wave-like and up-trending pattern in recent days. Warm daytime temperatures and cold nighttime temperatures create the cyclical pattern. This is the unmistakable signature of snowmelt in the mountains.

And so we begin.