Water Supply in the West

Water --- if you are a farmer or rancher, water is one of your biggest concerns. Will there be enough water to plant? Will there be too much water and flooding? How is the seasonal snow pack?

USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey looks at the Western water supplies.

"We are a little over two months into the 6 Plus month Western winter wet season that's interesting that we've had a very sharp delineation between the Haves and Have Nots so far this young season in the Northwest and portions of the northern Rockies a lot of these storms have been warm storms they have produced a lot of rain at lower elevations and therefore some of the snow accumulations have been generally restricted to the highest elevations and the only air is really reporting above normal snowpack early in the season including Washington Cascades and portions of Idaho Montana and Wyoming outside of that we are looking at below normal snowpacks even in areas that have received a bun and precipitation you get south of the Sierra Nevada and to Southern California and then stretch across to the southern Rockies we have seen very little if any precipitation during the last 2 months conditions are extremely dry we've seen drought returning to a number of areas in the southwest and includes a large sections of Arizona Utah and western parts of Colorado and New Mexico."

The good news, there is still a lot of the wet season left.