Snowpack levels better than last year

High-elevation snowpack levels and streamflow forecasts for Northwest Montana are looking good this year, especially compared with declining numbers by this time last year.

Snow water equivalent — a measure of the water currently locked up as high-elevation snowpack — is slightly below average for the year in the region’s two main river basins, according to a monthly report from the National Resources Conservation Service.

The Flathead River Basin improved to 88 percent of normal snowpack and the Kootenai River Basin was at 86 percent as of March 1. Those numbers are both higher than a year ago.

Lucas Zukiewicz, Conservation Service water specialist, said in an interview Monday the agency uses data from field observation, high-elevation snow gauges and overall precipitation to prepare its reports.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty, but for now we’re off to a good start,” Zukiewicz said Monday. “The valleys didn’t see a whole lot [of precipitation], but the mountains definitely made up for it.”

Northwest Montana’s snowpack generally peaks in early to mid-April, he added.

February was a good month for precipitation, helping push the Flathead Basin to 100 percent of normal for the water year, which began Oct. 1.

The Kootenai Basin was sitting at 113 percent of normal for the 2015-16 water year.

The report’s streamflow forecast also paints a rosy picture.

Flows in the Flathead and the Kootenai river systems are expected to be more than 90 percent of normal for the period extending from April through July. That’s about 40 percent better than last year’s flows for both river systems.

“Last year was an anomaly. We didn’t see much spring or summer precipitation,” Zukiewicz said. “What we’re really hoping for is kind of a normal spring for all our basins.”

The region’s longest extreme drought in more than a decade finally ended last month, although the U.S. Drought Monitor still classifies much of Northwest Montana in “severe drought” status.

The weekly drought report uses a wide range of indicators to assess drought, with snowpack and short-term precipitation only part of the equation.

Statewide, the Drought Monitor still places a quarter of Montana in a moderate to severe drought and more than half the state still qualifies as “abnormally dry.”

In a Monday news release, the Conservation Service described last month’s precipitation as “hit or miss” overall in Montana, with some small basins west of the Continental Divide receiving less than 80 percent of typical rain and snow.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.