Snowpack experts wary of summer

For the West, spring snowpack is often compared to money in the bank. If that’s the case, the past few months have been quite the spending spree.

The Inland Northwest winter started with a saturation of rain and snow. Portions of the Idaho Panhandle that had nearly 250 percent of an average year’s precipitation at the beginning of winter are now below normal, prompting concerns of a dry, possibly smoky summer.

“Last month we were sitting pretty in all basins, but by the first of April we had lost a considerable amount of snow,” said Scott Pattee, water supply specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The Newman Lake basin reported Washington’s lowest snowpack reading at 61 percent of average. The Spokane River and the Idaho Panhandle were reporting 77 percent of an average season’s snowpack.

The Panhandle has Idaho’s healthiest snowpack.

Much of the state has about half its usual snowpack for the season. The Owyhee and Little Wood river basins have only a quarter of the usual snow, according to data from the conservation service.

The numbers are watched closely by farmers, wildland firefighters, dam operators and even whitewater enthusiasts, but experts say it’s too early to draw any conclusions from the rapidly dwindling snow levels.

Soils remain saturated and reservoirs are brimming from the heavy fall rains, Pattee said. “That’s going to be our saving grace this year.”

Warm March weather, however, has made the remaining snowpack much heavier and denser than normal, which means “it doesn’t take as much energy to begin the melt process,” Pattee said.

The Inland Northwest might have less snow than usual, but the opposite is true for much of British Columbia. Flooding is now being predicted for portions of Okanagan County, including areas burned by wildfire last summer, said Royce Fontenot, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service office in Spokane.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released water from Libby Dam in Montana on Monday because of deep snows north of the border, Fontenot said.

Last year, the corps had to spill water over the dam – prompting widespread flooding downstream near Bonners Ferry – because of a last-minute surge of rain and snowmelt.

Long-range forecasts from the National Weather Service point toward normal temperatures and slightly above-normal precipitation for the next month in the Inland Northwest, Fontenot said. Summer, though, is looking to be hotter and drier than normal.

“We are concerned about the lack of snowpack,” Fontenot said. “We’re starting to get a little concerned about a drying trend.”