Rain,Rain

Rain rain don’t go away. Call me a fool but in my view, certainly this time of the year when crops are not yet in the ground, the worst poem you can recite is “Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day.” Whoever wrote that wasn’t thinking of agriculture and the irrigation needs of our great Idaho farmers and ranchers. So on a rainy day last week, I called USDA local snow survey expert, Ron Abramovich to talk about the state of Idaho’s waters. “Overall the snowpack in Idaho has quite a bit of variability. Some of the lowest snowpack’s are in the Panhandle region at 67% of normal. The Spokane is 74% along with the Weiser. the Payette and Mud Lake area of Idaho are at 88% of average. The high snow packs are in Oakley and Salmon Falls area and they are 150% of average. Then Upper Snake and Wyoming which are used for irrigation across most of Southern Idaho, are 125% of normal right now. We have gotten off to a pretty good start. That equates to nearly near-normal stream flow forecasts at this time. We are still going to finalize our forecasts and put it on our website.”