Q. Miller

and 4 more

Rising temperatures and shifting fire regimes in the western United States are pushing fires upslope into areas of deep winter snowpack, necessitating a new understanding of how hydrologic processes change following wildfire. We quantified differences in the timing and magnitude of quickflow responses to summer rainstorms between six catchments of varying levels of burn severity and seasonal snowpack cover for years 1-3 after the 2020 Cameron Peak fire. Our objectives were to (1) determine how burn severity and snow persistence influenced the magnitude, timing, and likelihood of a quickflow response, (2) quantify change in responses over time, and (3) identify the influencing factors for these responses. We identified maximum 60-min rainfall intensity (MI 60) thresholds yearly for each catchment by determining which MI 60 value best separated rainstorms that generated quickflow from those that did not. We used generalized linear models to determine which predictors were correlated to both the probability of a quickflow response and four quickflow response metrics: peak quickflow, total event quickflow, stage rise, and lag to peak time. We found that rainfall intensity thresholds were only good at predicting a quickflow response in the intermittent snow zone (ISZ), and that these were slightly higher than other reported post-fire thresholds for this region. Both threshold analysis and model results showed that a response was more likely in the persistent snow zone (PSZ) than in the ISZ, likely due to the higher soil moisture content in that area. The effect that burn severity and year post-fire had on the quickflow response was ambiguous, yet model results for stage rise indicate that widespread overland flow only occurred at the severely burned ISZ site. These results demonstrate that the streamflow responses to fire vary between snow zones, indicating a need to account for elevation and snow persistence in post-fire risk assessments.