Summer rains aren’t a big part of the Colorado River Basin’s water supply story, but they don’t hurt. So here’s an optimistic map, published this morning by the Climate Prediction Center:

July-September outlook, courtesy CPC

The more interesting maps are the long term ones:

courtesy CPC

You can see that for the lower part of the Colorado River Basin (where I live in New Mexico, yay!) odds are clearly tilting toward a wetter winter, based on the growing chances of an El Niño. But you can see from these maps the way El Niño really isn’t a strong predictor, one way or the other, for the primary watersheds that feed the Colorado River.

Here’s some great background via Paul Miller regarding El Niño and Colorado River runoff.