Mother Nature threw a lot of weather at Montana in January, but too little of it came in the form of snow. That’s the assessment of the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Bozeman which reports that snowpack is lagging in most of our river basins.
The first two weeks of the year were mostly dry. A lot more rain and snow moved in during the second half of the month. Water Supply Specialist Lucas Zukiewicz says those storms contributed only marginally to our snowpack.
"The northwest basins and north central basins have been below normal since January 1. They didn’t see much improvement with the snowfall that we had since the middle half of the month. North central basins continue to be well below normal at this point. When you move into the southern basins we’re generally seeing near normal to even above normal conditions in some of those basins in southwest Montana like the Jefferson River basin.”
The next two to three months will be critical for precipitation before the tap more or less shuts off for the summer. The northwest basins have their best shot at adding to their snow reserves by the end of February. Basins east of the Continental Divide are most likely to get significant rain or snow in the spring.
See more Montana water supply outlook and snowpack reports from NRCS Montana.