Eric Hasselstrom and drought
For Idaho, Winter 2025/2026 was the second warmest winter since 1896, with record-low snowpack and warm temperatures that accelerated snowmelt a month earlier than normal. Nearly all Idaho’s basins were classified within drought conditions.
Ken Bruegeman and Eric Hasselstrom, two farmers & ranchers from North Central Idaho discuss how the drought has affected them just like so many others across the state.
Eric Hasselstrom, I farm and ranch here in Winchester, Idaho. For about the last three to five years, it's almost seemed like the climate's been a month off. And it used to be that we always got a lot of rain in June.
And those were always the rains that made our crop was the June rains.
This year what we've seen in these wheat fields is any of the low ground had some stress of too wet early. But then we didn't get any rain late on top of that. For the last three years, that's happened to us every time. We don't get the June rains that really make everything.
The biggest thing is you get multiple years and then you don't have that deep moisture. And then when it leaves, and another thing is that's tough in this area is if you've got moisture early so the roots get started and they're only feeding in that level of moisture and your deep moisture isn't built back up from the last two or three years, when that goes away and the roots try to take off to go deeper, then there's not moisture there. So you get stranded and it's been tough.
