Regional water picture for Idaho

Idaho Department of Water Resources hydrologist Dave Hoekema gives us regional pictures of the water year ahead of us. Speaker2: Today in southwestern Idaho, we're not seeing any major concerns just due to the fact snowpack was really significant both in southeast Idaho and southwest Idaho. So those forecasts have dropped substantially. But we're about on our normal trajectory for reservoir usage. Eastern Idaho we're seeing the snake drawn down faster than normal. We're below average for this time of year. We believe there will probably be some limited shortages at this point in August and September and October. We'll just have to see how fast that storage gets used up in the system. It really depends on how warm the summer is, but we're at that point where we're expecting shortages in the upper snake. Not dramatic shortages, but some limited shortages. Probably not as bad as we saw in 2022. Northern Idaho is now in its third year of drought, which is a really rare occurrence in northern Idaho. And so we're seeing runoff in that region pretty low. We're seeing another year with pretty significant impacts to yield and the rain fed portions of the place. We've gone from having a normal year suddenly having one of the driest springs in the record. We're expecting that by the end of this year will be really low on reservoir carryover. Not in the best place going into the following water year. Speaker1: Pray for summer rain.