The
Boundary County area snowpack is looking more
and more optimistic at this point in the year.
The current snowpack is just shy being twice
what it was at this point last year, which was a
below average precipitation year, and a year
that was later stricken by wildfires throughout
the region, including some right here in our
county. Would you believe that as of yesterday, March 7, there were 78 inches of snow on the ground at the Hidden Lake monitoring station, which is at an elevation of 5,040 feet in Boundary County's Selkirk Mountains. And just last week, 85 inches of snow were measured on the ground at the station. (That's over 7 feet of snow on the ground).
Those numbers are putting the Boundary County mountain snowpack close to its 30 year average for snowpack at this point in the year, good news for a county that saw its snowpack level off at about half its normal depth last year, with no further appreciable gains after mid-February.
Experts who monitor and study water, snow, and precipitation patterns in our area make their measurements on what they call the "Water Year." The Water Year begins on October 1 of each calendar year, and runs through until September 30 of the following calendar year. So, we are currently in the sixth month (March) of the current water year which began last October 1. And at this point in the year, it's not looking too bad.
In the following chart, based on information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service, the green line shows the 30 year average "snow water equivalent" for the snowpack pattern seen in the North Idaho Panhandle in a typical year. The black line, representing this year's snowpack information, is tracking along the 30-year average pretty well. The chart's red line shows how dramatically low last year's snowpack was, dropping well below the 30-year average.
Boundary County has two monitoring stations that each day measure precipitation, snowfall, snow water equivalent, air temperature, and other parameters. One site is in the Hidden Lake area, at an elevation of 5,040 feet. The Hidden Lake monitoring site was constructed in 2000, and began operation in September 2000.
The second monitoring site in the county is in the Myrtle Creek area, at a lower elevation of 3,520 feet, and began its monitoring operation in October 2003.
As of yesterday, March 7, the instruments at Hidden Lake have measured a total accumulation of 54.5 inches of precipitation since the water year began last October 1. That amount is well over the 44 inches usually seen by March 7, according to the 30 year average. Hidden Lake's 54.5 inches are more than 120% of the 30 year average.
At Myrtle Creek, again the numbers for total precipitation look good so far. Total precipitation at the Myrtle Creek monitoring site since October 1 is 18.5 inches (as of yesterday), which is 105% of the average amount seen for March 7.
Now we're going to hold up for a moment while you, our reader, take a moment to look through the following two charts. The first chart shows total precipitation and snowpack information for the Hidden Lake monitoring site for the current Water Year, and the second chart shows the same information for the Myrtle Creek site:
(Story continues below these two charts)
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According to these charts, all the measured precipitation and snowfall parameters are around 100% of average or better at the monitoring sites, with the exception of the Myrtle Creek snowpack, which was close to 100% of normal until mid-February, but has dropped quite a bit in the past two weeks.
But overall, the snowpack and the precipitation for the current water year are looking good for Boundary County.
As can be seen in the top chart above (the Idaho Northern Panhandle Region Snowpack Comparison chart), according to the green line's 30-year average, it is about mid-April when the snowpack typically stops accumulating, and, as the green line above shows, starts its downturn as spring runoff begins. If our precipitation patterns can just hang on and continue to accumulate for one more month until the annual runoff begins in mid-April, we should be in good shape.
Early on in the Water Year, experts were concerned that a much stronger than usual El Niño effect could cause havoc in mountain snowfall and other precipitation water supplies of the Pacific Northwest. Back in January, when the situation looked a little more grim, and concerns about El Niño were high , the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland issued a report stating that “El Nino has already produced significant global impacts and is expected to affect temperature and precipitation patterns across the United States during the upcoming months." The NOAA statement continued with an unsettling scenario: “The seasonal outlooks for January-March indicate an increased likelihood of . . . below-median precipitation over the northern tier of the United States. Above-average temperatures are favored in the West and Northern half of the country."
The good news for now is that so far, those concerns have not panned out, and precipitation and snowpack in our area and in most of the Northwest have held up.
Looking ahead to projected stream flows for the coming spring and summer months, the Columbia Basin Bulletin reported forecast information for various Columbia River tributaries (of which the Kootenai River is one) as follows: "As of March 2, water supply forecasts from April through September are 97 percent of average for the Columbia River at Mica Dam; 90 percent of average for the Kootenai River below Montana’s Libby Dam; 90 percent of average for the Flathead River at Hungry Horse Dam; 94 percent of average for the Spokane River; 101 percent of average for the Columbia River at Grand Coulee Dam; 94 percent of average on the Snake River at Irwin; 83 percent of average for the Snake River at American Falls; 99 percent of average for the Snake River at Lower Granite Dam; and 96 percent of average for the Clearwater River at Dworshak Dam."
The Columbia Basin Bulletin goes on to say, "The big bell weather for basin-wide streamflows is on the Columbia River at The Dalles Dam — currently projected to be at 100 percent of the 30-year average."