DENVER -- It's looking like we will all face another summer of conserving water as the snowpack stands right now, 7NEWS reported.

There's more snow in the mountains than there was last year at this time, but the state is still significantly below average, experts say.

The amount of snow today is a good indication of how much water the metro area will have this summer since 80 percent of Colorado's surface water supply comes from melting snow runoff.

But so far, the signs are not very promising.

"It's not the worst news you can expect, but it could be a lot better, and we're going to need a lot more snow in the coming months to even have a good runoff year," said Mike Gillespie of the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Once a month, Gillespie or someone on his team treks into the wilderness to measure the mountain snow pack. They measure the depth of snow and the amount of water in the snow.

On Monday, the snow on Berthoud Pass was about 30 inches deep.

"Unfortunately, this snowpack right now is not enough to alleviate our water supply situation," Gillespie said.

That's not as bad as last year, but it's still 6 inches below average.

"Last year was really dismal and pretty much left our reservoir storage about 50 percent of average," he said. "We need a well-above average snowpack to even make a dent in the deficit we incurred last year."

Gillespie, who has been measuring Colorado's snowpack for 20 years, said he's never seen it this low this long. It's the sixth year in a row the snowpack has been below average.

He said we're about halfway through the snow season and we need more than double the usual amount of snow between now and May to bring levels back to normal.