Soils Remain Dry Across Idaho

Despite being in the middle of winter, many locations across Idaho are dry for this time of year, with some locations reporting drought figures.  Erin Whorton with NRCS said when looking at total Water Year to Date precipitation, which is all of the water that’s fallen out of the sky since October 1st, Idaho is off where it should be for this time of year.  The exception she noted is the southwest part of the state, which is reporting decent root zone moisture numbers.

“We do have dry conditions out there, like the snowpack percentages are a little bit better than what the total water precipitation is looking like.  And that just indicates that we had this dry hot fall," Whorton said.  "What that means for the Ag community is that we're seeing dry soils across a big portion of Idaho, especially in eastern Idaho, and the Snake River headwaters and then in central Idaho moving north along the Idaho/Montana border. Those conditions have been pretty dry.”

Whorton added that December was warm, meaning there is very little low elevation snowpack.  And while that means most of the snow is in the higher elevations, she says December wasn’t all bad for farmland.

“The one thing that was pretty beneficial is that, since December was warm and we got some big storms, In those lower elevations much of that precipitation fell as rain, increasing surface soil moisture.” 

According to the latest drought numbers, nearly 80% of Idaho is abnormally dry for this time of year, with some locations reporting Moderate, Severe or even Extreme droughts.

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