Water Supply Forecast

Water Supply Forecast

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
I'm Bob Larson. Great water news for Washington state growers as we go from one of the driest months in January to one of the absolute wettest in February.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service's Scott Pattee says recent precipitation rescued the Winter ...

SCOTT PATTEE ... "This past month, the month of February was very good for us as far as weather went. As we remember, January was extremely cold and very very dry. Well we really turned that around with nearly 200 percent of precipitation in the mountains. Early February was really a boomer setting daily rainfall records at numerous SNOTEL sites early in the month. And that really kicked things off and dumped a lot of snow on us."

And, Pattee says, the hits just keep on coming ...

SCOTT PATTEE ... "Even up through just this last weekend, I looked at the last five days just for this month, and we've really made significant increases in our snowpack throughout the state. We're well above 90 percent of normal in all basins in the state now for snowpack. So, that's always good news especially if we can kind of continue it, at least through parts of this month in order to just maintain what we have. If we can maintain the numbers that we have, the percentages we have now, we're going to be just absolutely perfect condition coming into Spring and irrigation season."

Pattee says after last year's dismal snowpack, this year looks to be just the opposite with a snowpack 108 percent above normal statewide, looking at a 30-day forecast of both cooler and wetter than normal.

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