Unexpected rain in the Colorado high country has officials juggling water as they deal with extra water, needed dam work and the German brown trout. The Gunnison River is running higher these days than usual, said officials with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, but it will rise and drop again through the year. “We are releasing probably more than you are used to seeing in the last 10 years,” said Coll Stanton, a hydrology engineer at the bureau’s Grand Junction office. “It’s not unusual if you look at the last 20 years of history.” What’s forcing the water downstream is a wet and rainy August in which inflows to Blue Mesa Reservoir on the Gunnison were 116 percent of normal, Stanton said.

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