Snowpack

Danny Tappa is a Hydrologist and Data Collection Officer with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Idaho Snow Survey. “The snowpack truly is the lifeblood of the state.

So, kind of the summary here is reflective of what’s going on throughout most of Idaho. We started off actually pretty slow but then mid-December things really picked up and we got a substantial amount of snow late December, early January. But since early January we saw a major weather pattern shift and it hasn’t really changed back. And so the conditions here haven’t changed much in the last month, and we’re currently sitting at 79% of normal snowpack for March 1st of the More’s Creek Summit snow course site. And actually since our last measurement which was the end of last month, so February 1st we’ve only pick up 1.8 inches of new water content in the snowpack at this location, and that’s much, much below normal.

1.8 inches for the month of February of new water content is the lowest we’ve seen since 2005 for this location, and probably is in like the top 5 lowest that we have on record.

Sometimes we do see some dry spells in January or February, but to see this persist since early January and carry all the way through February is very unusual.”

We’re a bit better off in the northern half of the state.