04/29/05 April rains do help Idaho farmers

Timely rain, that's for sure. Ron Abromovich of the NRCS Snow Survey says the wet weather this month is just what the doctor ordered. ABROMOVICH "At some of our sites it looks like we got a quarter to half of the amount of snow water in the past 30 days compared to what we had all season. The current eight SnowTel sites in the Boise basin combined snow water is the ninth lowest since 1961. So we have improved in the past month when it was the third or fourth lowest on April 1st." The remaining snowpack in the high country is only half the normal amount. ABROMOVICH "Boise basin is 58 percent, Payette is 54 percent of average, the Weiser is 60, Salmon is 60, Clearwater is 53 percent and the Panhandle is only 48 percent of average. The highest snowpacks in the state are in the far south, south of the Snake River. They're about 95 percent of average from the Owyhee over to the Bear River basin." The April rains did delay irrigation demand and Abromovich says we still need to have cool weather so that the snowpack stays in the mountains for as long as possible. ABROMOVICH "Deadwood summit which is in the heart of Idaho it has about 30 inches of water. The average is 48." Its taken six years of drought to get to this point and the experts say we'll need five to six years of normal or above normal moisture to get out of drought. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott