Bigger Snowfall Ends Northwest Dry Spell But Spokane Area Snowpack Only 84 Percent Of Normal

Higher-than-average snowfall in 1994-‘95 ended an eight-year dry spell for much of the Northwest.

One exception was the Coeur d’Alene-Spokane river basin, where mountain snowpacks were at 84 percent of normal at the end of April.

But this year will be remembered with a sigh of relief by farmers, fish enthusiasts and hydropower suppliers in the region.

“It’s a good start on the end of the bad years,” was the cautious reaction of Scott Pattee, a federal water supply specialist in Spokane.

Washington’s Yakima River basin - officially declared a drought area last year - ended up with snowpacks of 131 percent above normal. That helped farmers who rely on irrigation reservoirs.

“It’s been a boon to them,” said Pattee, who works for the Natural Resource Conservation Service. “They were on the verge of very, very critical shortages. Last year, they lost a lot of crops.”

The state’s upper Columbia River watersheds lucked out, too. The Okanagan area snowpack was 144 percent of normal.

In Eastern Washington and the Idaho Panhandle, Pattee said, “we didn’t pick up the spring snowfalls we normally would.

But we did get lots of rain. We were at 108 percent of normal for precipitation.”

Mount Spokane, however, got more snow than the rest of the area. It ended up with a normal snowpack, Pattee said.

The Clearwater River watershed ended the snow season with the lowest accumulations of any major basin in Idaho, with 81 percent of normal snowpack. The picture was brighter in the southern part of the state, where snows melting into the Snake and Salmon river systems have a big impact on the Northwest economy.

The Salmon River basin had a snowpack of 118 percent of normal; the Boise River, 117 percent; the Henrys Fork/Teton in the Upper Snake region, 135 percent.

“What we’re getting now is rain in the valleys, but it’s still cold enough that it’s falling as snow in the higher country,” said Ron Abromovich, who reports on water supplies from Boise. “That’ll help saturate the soil in farmlands here, and maybe delay the initial demand for irrigation water.”

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