Montana’s snowpack is basically as good as it’s going to get this spring. That’s normal for early June. But what’s not so normal, according to Lucas Zukiewicz, is how quickly it’s melting off.
"In general, we really did start our melt at the beginning of April. We’d prefer to see that occur sometime between the mid and end part of April. It’s basically resulted in us moving our snow water out of the mountains a little bit early this year."
Zukiewicz is a water supply specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Bozeman.
He blames the faster-than-expected melt on a series of high pressure systems that regularly brought warm air into the region.
By June first, he says 25 to 50 percent of the annual snowpack typically remains in the mountains. This year, however, only 10 to 40 percent of that snowpack remains.
"And what that means is it’s been able to have been caught in our reservoirs. We’ve seen the flows in our river up above average since the beginning of April. They’ve stayed that way till bout the end of May. Now we’re starting to see the snowpack run out and we’re going to start to see the flows in our rivers start to drop for the summer."
Zukiewicz says Montana’s typically sparse summer precipitation will play a critical role in streamflows later this summer.