05/02/07 Thousands of farm acres could go dry

The folks who track this kind of thing like Ron Abromovich of the NRCS snow survey team call April a hit or miss month. ABROMOVICH "Oakley basin where the precip was at 130 percent of average, Bruneau basin was above average. A couple of areas where it was below normal, half of normal in the Panhandle and the Big Lost basin." Abromovich says most of southern Idaho will have ample irrigation water thanks to reservoir carryover from last year. But there are some potential problem areas. ABROMOVICH "There's nothing else to come in the Owyhee basin unless it rains. The snowpack there is only nine percent of average so there's only a little bit of high elevation snow left there. Basins in eastern Idaho, Willow, Blackfoot, Portneuf they're 22 percent of average for the snowpack, Little Wood basin is 20 percent of average in terms of snow water, Weiser basin is even down to 30 percent, Big Lost basin is also at 29 percent of average and the rest of the state pretty much falls into 30 to 50 percent of average." Abromovich says we had a similar situation two years ago but May rains were plentiful and that helped delay irrigation demand. He says the forecast for the first half of May now calls for cooler, near normal temperatures with a chance of rain. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott