Snowpack lags a bit behind

But Travis Bloomer figures winter has barely begun.

He hopes so, anyway.

He is quick to note that he’s talking about winter in the mountains, lest anybody accuse him of rooting for their valley gardens to remain snowbound until April.

Bloomer works for the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service in Baker City.

One of his duties is to keep track of the mountain snowpack.

Which, besides being fun to ski or snowmobile on, is the source of the water that irrigates the county’s crops and slakes the thirst of everything from cattle to coyotes to, well, you.

So far, Bloomer is not especially pleased with what this winter has delivered.

“Those (snowpack) values up there in the Elkorns are lower than we’d like,” he said Monday. “But I’m an optimist, and it’s still pretty early in the winter.”

That leaves sufficient time for storms to make up for a snow deficit that ranges from slight to significant.

The situation is more bleak at the higher elevations.

At Anthony Lakes, for instance, the third-highest snow survey site in the region, the water content in the snow is about 67 percent of average.

That troubles Bloomer because the snowpack near the summits lingers longer, and thus keeps streams flowing during the summer when the water is particularly vital for farmers.

Fortunately, snow was relatively plentiful the past two years, and local reservoirs are likely to refill this spring even if the overall snowpack, measured at more than a dozen places across Northeastern Oregon, stays at its current level about 10 percent below average.

Phillips Reservoir, for example, which supplies irrigation water to more than 30,000 acres in Baker Valley, is holding almost 40,000 acre-feet — slightly more than half full.

At this time last year the reservoir was at 36,500 acre-feet.

The snowpack was a bit better last year, though, and Phillips did reach full pool by late June.

Also on the positive side of the ledger, Bloomer points out that the water content at a few lower-elevation sites, such as Dooley Mountain, is well above average for the first week in February.

That area is downstream from Phillips, so the snowmelt won’t add to the reservoir’s storage.

Not directly, anyway.

However, the snow that melts on Dooley Mountain will flow into the Powder River, and so long as the river runs high, irrigation district officials can save more of the reservoir’s water for late summer when streams turn into trickles.

In addition to assembling data from the survey sites listed in the chart at right, Bloomer took a two-hour helicopter flight last week over the Wallowa Mountains.

There are six snow survey towers there, ladder-like structures that allow surveyors to gauge the depth of the snow.

Depth of snow is not as meaningful a measure as weight, because the latter allows surveyors to estimate the amount of water (shown in the chart as “snow water equivalent) that will trickle away when the snow melts, Bloomer said.