A central Idaho winter season that wasn’t is quickly becoming the one that has snow junkies smiling.
The series of strong Pacific storms that dumped several feet of snow on local mountains during the past few weeks has turned around depressing snow totals to such an extent that local snowpacks are nearing or have already surpassed normal levels.
Here in the Big Wood basin—which is designated as all of the WoodRiverValley as well as the Camas Creek drainage near Fairfield—the snowpack had risen to 92 percent of normal by Tuesday, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service. That compares to a paltry 34 percent-of-normal reading reported on Dec. 4.
The federal agency tracks snowpack depths day-by-day each winter and compares them with daily averages measured out over recent decades. The NRCS measures snowpacks in the Big Wood basin at nine Snotel sites stretching from Galena Summit southwest to the Soldier Ranger Station near Fairfield.
Short for snowpack telemetry, Snotel sites transmit weather data remotely from isolated mountain sites to Idaho’s NRCS headquarters in Boise. There are 83 Snotel sites dotting the state’s high country.
To the east of the WoodRiverValley, the snowpack is doing even better in the Little Wood basin, having climbed to 103 percent of normal by Tuesday. To the north in the SalmonRiver basin, which covers a large swath of central Idaho, the snowpack is 90 percent of normal. On Dec. 4, the Salmon basin snowpack registered a disappointing 52 percent of normal.
Statewide, the BruneauRiver basin in southern Idaho has the best snowpack of all, standing at 113 percent of normal on Tuesday.
For now, the farther one goes north in Idaho the lower the snowpack percentages are. Just south of the state’s boundary with Canada, the snowpack in the northern Panhandle region was averaging just 68 percent of normal on Tuesday.
The heavy snowfall of the past few weeks is causing a number of headaches for the region, among the highest of which is high avalanche danger. So far this winter, there have been numerous fatalities among skiers, boarders and snowmobilers in both out-of-bounds backcountry areas and, in two cases, inbounds at Jackson Hole and Snowbird ski resorts.
In all, there have been 19 avalanche-related fatalities in the region, with 11 of those happening in the lower 48 states. The remaining eight deaths took place on Dec. 28 in British Columbia among a group of snowmobilers at HarveyPass, near Fernie.
In a Tuesday avalanche advisory from the Sawtooth National Forest Avalanche Center in Ketchum, forecaster Blase Reardon estimated the avalanche danger to be high in the north valley, near the headwaters of the Salmon River and in the SawtoothMountains. He warned that strong, gusty winds have added yet more load to slopes already unstable from recent snow that fell on top of a weak base.
“Skiers are reporting relatively widespread collapsing of the snowpack, with cracks propagating a hundred feet or more in some cases,” he said.
Backcountry travelers take note: The extended forecast from the National Weather Service calls for significant chances of snow throughout the remainder of the week.
To view the avalanche center’s daily advisories, go to www.sawtoothavalanche.com.
Recent snowfall buried the Wood River Valley under mounds of snow, as evidenced by the nearly 2 feet of snow resting on top of this Chevy Suburban out Warm Springs Creek. The National Weather Service is calling for the snowfall to pick up again today and last throughout the week. Photo by Willy Cook
