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Map courtesy of U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service Most of Idaho’s river basins are holding average to above-average snowpacks so far this winter, as shown in this map. Only in southeast Idaho are snowpacks slightly below average.
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What's been a boon for local skiers and snowboarders this winter is also a great relief to Idaho's farmers. Statewide, most of Idaho's river basins have above-average snowpacks.
Online data provided by the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service showed the snowpack in the Big Wood Basin, which includes the Wood River Valley as well as the Camas Creek drainage in the Fairfield area, to be 110 percent of average on Tuesday morning.
The figure is calculated by averaging the snow-water content of nine Snotel sites in the Big Wood basin.
The snowpack looks even better to the east in the Little Wood Basin, where the NRCS reported it to be 121 percent of average.
Short for "snowpack telemetry," Snotel sites relay a vast array of weather data from remote mountain sites to Idaho's NRCS headquarters in Boise. Snotel evolved from a NRCS congressional mandate in the mid-1930s to measure Western snowpacks in order to forecast water supply. Today, there are 83 Snotel sites throughout Idaho's mountains.
Of the 19 Idaho river basins for which the NRCS measures snowpacks, only three, in the southeast part of the state were just below average.
Western Idaho's Weiser Basin had the highest snowpack percentage on Tuesday with a whopping 130 percent of average.
And while encouraging for sure, the deepening snowpacks this winter won't on their own mean the end to the drought Idaho has been suffering since the winter of 1999-2000, said Steve Burrell, a hydrologist with the Idaho Department of Water Resources.
Burrell said it would take several years of good snowpacks to correct the damage that's been done to Idaho in the name of low carryover reservoir storage.
"Two years at least," he said.
Burrell said the drought was interrupted only once, during the big winter of 2005-2006.
He said that as of several weeks ago, Magic Reservoir was below 20 percent capacity. He said on Tuesday, the Little Wood Reservoir, north of Carey, was at 38 percent of capacity.
Still, Burrell said that if the current heavy precipitation trends continue clear through February and March, things could turn out positively for local irrigators this summer.
"We may fill Magic Reservoir, but I wouldn't want to place any bets on that," he said.
Burrell said that while low-elevation snowpacks also look good, more important are the high-elevation snowpacks because they stay longer and melt slower. He said that helps maintain summer river flows, which in turn helps farmers who require water throughout the summer.
Burrell said low-elevation snowpacks tend to melt quicker and are typically associated with spring floods.
Of course, he said, the above-average snowpacks that exist throughout Idaho are a good move in the right direction. And they could mean the beginning of the end of the state's nine-year drought.
"Until the next dry year," Burrell said.
