Colorado's 2025 Water Year in Review has been released and it's not pretty.
The review is an annual study conducted by the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University. The headline for 2025: It was the 10th-warmest water year since records started being kept in 1895.
A "water year," according to Denver Water, is the period between Oct. 1 through Sept. 30 that experts use to track the flow of annual precipitation from early snowfall through runoff and water use on farm fields and in cities.
The Scripps News Group spoke with Allie Mazurek, an engagement climatologist with Colorado Climate Center, to learn more.
Mazurek said seven of the 10 warmest water years in Colorado have been just since 2012. Ogden asked if this report shows any reason to be hopeful about climate change.
"With these temperatures, there's not much hope there, I would say," Mazurek said.
Mazurek says the warming trends in Colorado mirror the warming the rest of the country is seeing.
"These warmer temperatures... We expect worse snowpack in a future warmer climate. And in terms of precipitation, we expect there to be more extremes. More extremes both being flooding and more extremes on other drought side of things, as well," she said.
Other findings of this year's report show conditions were also abnormally dry across Colorado during the water year. Water Year 2025 ranked as the 51st-driest on record, though conditions varied substantially across the state.
Click here for a link to the full 2025 water year report.
