For the week of April 16 - 22, 2003

Spring snow boosts mountain snowpack

Much of West still experiencing drought

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

Cool and wet weather this spring helped boost snow packs in many parts of Idaho, making the water outlook for summer more optimistic and bringing a few late-spring powder days to Sun Valley.

"It’s pretty unusual this late in the season to get such an improvement," said Phil Morrisey, a hydrologist with the U.S. Department of Natural Resources and Conservation Service in Boise.

As winter and spring begin to mingle, many central Idaho river basins are boasting near-normal snowpacks, while southern basins are extremely low. The upper Big Wood River basin, pictured, was 86 percent of average Tuesday. Express photo by Willy Cook

Skiers awoke to 5 inches of new snow on Bald Mountain’s summit on Monday, April 14 and to another 7 inches Tuesday morning.

With the addition of new snow, some of the state's major river basins, such as the Salmon, Payette and Clearwater, now have near normal snow packs. That is welcome news for agriculture and recreation-tourism.

But the outlook across most of the West is still pretty dim.

According to the April Water Supply Outlook released Tuesday, streamflows for the year in parts of southern Idaho will range from 20 to 40 percent of average. The hardest-hit areas in Idaho will be the Owyhee, Bruneau, Salmon Falls and Oakley basins and parts of the Bear River drainage.

Problems in those drainages will be multiplied by the fact that many of the region's reservoirs were nearly dry by the end of last summer, Morrisey said. Some of those reservoirs are only half full, and others are nearly empty.

Reservoir storage also could affect Idaho Power Co.'s hydropower production, which in an average water year amounts to about 60 percent of the utility's total power production. The forecast for inflows to Brownlee Reservoir, the company's main source of water for hydropower production, is about 53 percent of normal, company spokesman Jeff Beaman said.

Precipitation for the month in the Boise, Weiser and Payette basins was 150 percent of average, a marked improvement from February, when precipitation was just under 60 percent of average.

Across the West, only four states—California, Idaho, Montana and Washington—are near average, but reservoir storage in the rest of the West is well below normal, according to a conservation service report issued Tuesday.

"There's probably not a Western state that is sitting real pretty," said Kelly Redmond, regional climatologist for the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nev. "Nobody is going into the summer season with a real fat supply in their reservoirs."

While the Rocky Mountains, from Montana to northern New Mexico, improved during March, snowpacks in parts of Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Arizona were less than 50 percent of average.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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