Oregon Snowpack Looking Good For This Time Of Year

The Oregon snowpack is looking very good for this time of year, that according to Matt Warbritton with NRCS-Oregon.  He noted that all basins across the state right now are reporting averages well above 100% for this time of year, with the basins in the southeastern corner of the state, Lake County-Goose Lake, Harney and Owyhee nearing 200% of average.  Warbritton said these numbers are great especially in locations that have struggled with severe drought over the past couple of years, such as southern and central Oregon.

“One thing to note though when we look at snowpack we also want to look at water precipitation especially the earlier part of the year when we need that precipitation as rain before we get snowpack.  This saturates the soil and just provides in general the moisture that we need going into the snowpack season.  And while snowpack has generally been good across the state in all basins, the water year precipitation is below normal to well below normal but notably along the coast and into central Oregon.”

Warbritton stressed this is a good snowpack report for this time of year, adding the trend is headed in the right direction.

“We've maintained above normal conditions now from November and into mid-December here and you know in terms of the outlook for next summer we need the snowpack trend to continue to have healthy stream flows in the summer and also a healthy reservoir storage numbers during the summer too.” 

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