A recently released report confirms what most people locally know after a very snowy December — local snowpack is above average.

In the Roaring Fork River basin, the snowpack was 144 percent of average as of Jan. 1, according to data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service snow survey office in Lakewood.

Throughout the Colorado River basin, snowpack is 127 percent of average as of the first of the year, so both basins are doing better than the state as a whole, whose snowpack is 120 percent of average.

This is the highest snowpack since 1997, according to the NRCS news release, and only the third time since then that above-average January totals were measured across the state.

A measuring site at Independence Pass is measuring a snow depth of 40 inches.

The snowpack in the Roaring Fork basin is actually better than last year’s at this time, which was 125 percent of average. Last winter was a record snow season.

The NRCS refers to a series of snowstorms in southern Colorado river basins when it says, “We’ve seen a snowfall pattern which is strikingly similar to last year in these basins.”

The Roaring Fork Valley area has been the beneficiary of much of the snow in those storms.

Snowpack in the Rio Grande basin is 140 percent of average, which is the highest January total since 1985, and 135 percent of average in the San Juan, Animas and Dolores basins.

Northern Colorado basins, specifically the South Platte, North Platte and Yampa/White basins, are seeing snowpacks slightly below average, but generally greater than last year’s.

Overall, this bodes well for spring runoff and reservoir storage. Runoff is expected to be near average to above average for most of the state with 60 percent of the snowpack accumulation season still ahead.