January’s weather did little to improve Montana’s record low snowpack. It’s going to take a major change in the weather to improve conditions.
Experts hoping for above normal precipitation last month to make up for an abnormally dry November and December were left disappointed.
“Honestly, it’s a tad scary. It’s one of the lowest snow years, if not the lowest, we’ve seen in terms of widespread lack of snow,” Eric Larson, a water supply specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources and Conservation Service (NRCS), said.
Despite powerful winter storms and the historic bitter cold that gripped Montana last month, snowpack continues to lag.
“Snowpack’s faring about the best up in the northwest part of the state with close to about 70% normal or so. Otherwise, snowpack percentages are generally about 40% to 60% across most of Montana,” Larson said.
Over half of NRCS’s snow monitoring stations are measuring their lowest or second lowest snowpack on record. Marias Pass on the Rocky Mountain Front to south Glacier currently has the lowest snowpack in 90 years.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Monday reported that January’s runoff in the Upper Missouri River Basin above Sioux City, Iowa was just 56% of average.
Parts of southwest Montana may receive a few inches of snow this week, but the Climate Prediction Center’s long-range forecast calls for above-average temperatures through February.
