Wet March helped, but not much

The Daily Inter Lake

The March weather lived up to its reputation for fickleness this year, coming in like a lamb and turning into a lion for several days in the middle of the month.

Daily highs topped 50 degrees in the Flathead for the first 12 days of the month, continuing the region's unusually mild winter, with record highs of 57 and 65 degrees set on March 6 and March 11, respectively.

By mid-month, only 0.04 inches of total precipitation had been received, slightly more than the record low 0.03 inches received during February.

Since then, however, 8.4 inches of snow and 1.15 inches of precipitation has fallen - more than doubling the year-to-date total - according to National Weather Service records.

The total March precipitation of 1.19 inches was slightly above the 30-year average of 1.11 inches, but the year-to-date total of 2.00 inches is still well below the average of 3.73 inches.

Since Oct. 1, 5.34 inches of precipitation has been recorded in the valley, compared to an average of 7.79 inches.

The recent storms have helped improve the mountain snowpack. On Flattop Mountain in Glacier National Park, for example, weather gauges report that the snow depth has increased from 78 inches to 104 inches in the last week.

However, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming continue to have the worst drought outlook in the nation, with large regions rated extreme or exceptional, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Extreme drought conditions are expected to cause major crop or pasture losses and extreme fire danger. Exceptional drought conditions deteriorate from there.

The National Weather Service's April 1 water outlook indicates that streamflows along the Flathead River at Columbia Falls this summer are expected to range from 42 to 86 percent of normal, with a "probable" or most-likely value of 64 percent.