Record month boosts mountain snowpack

Heavy precipitation last month wasn’t just good for local skiers. A state water supply report shows record February snowfall at a dozen high-elevation sites throughout Western Montana.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on Monday released its monthly water supply outlook, finding that “all basins experience substantial improvements over the month, and many are now near to above normal for March 1.”

The Montana portions of the Flathead and Kootenai River basins were both at 97 percent of their median snow-water equivalent — a measure of the amount of water available for downstream water bodies.

That’s a significant improvement after a relatively dry January left the Flathead and Kootenai basins at 77 percent and 71 percent of normal, respectively. Both basins had received less than 50 percent of their average precipitation for the month.

Lucas Zukiewicz, a water supply specialist with the conservation service, said that low-pressure systems in January favored locations south of Montana, but by the beginning of February moisture from the Pacific began moving into the region from the Northwest.

“That [storm] in the first week of February came in with significant intensity and dropped a lot of snow in a pretty short amount of time,” Zukiewicz said, adding, “It looks like more of the same this week too. ... It looks like the pattern is going to continue, so that’s great news for all the water users in the state.”

Record-breaking February snow fell at several snow telemetry sites in Northwest Montana this year, including Stahl Peek and Grave Creek in the Whitefish Range, Many Glacier in Glacier Park, Garver Creek north of Troy and Mount Lockhart, just east of the Continental Divide in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. The site at Emery Creek, south of Glacier and north of Hungry Horse Reservoir, had its second-highest February snow on record.

For February, the Kootenai River basin recorded 215 percent of its average precipitation for the month. The Flathead saw similar snowfall, logging 193 percent of its February average. The basins across the Continental Divide were also favored by the month’s succession of snow storms: Headwaters to the Sun, Teton and Marias rivers received 220 percent of average and the combined basin for the St. Mary and Milk rivers received 222 percent.

Northwest Montana’s reservoirs are also in good shape, with those in the Flathead River basin 25 percent above average and those in the Kootenai 29 percent above average.

To view the full report, visit bit.ly/1Q072jp.

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