It’s the time when the snowpack can rise quickly – a cool, rainy Spring. The latest observation is 34.3 inches of water on the pillow – 151% of the 30 year average. It is definitely a lot easier to click the link than it was to haul the snow tubes up to get the data in the late seventies.
What happens next is a question for the weather forecasts. NOAA has released these projections for June, July and August.
The folks who know about these things are calling for a warmer and drier summer than normal. If that’s the case, it is good to be going in with a little extra water in the high country.
This graph, from 4-30-22 shows that the snowpack on Stahl is still increasing. The upper line on the record suggests that there’s only a week or so left for it to increase. Still, 127% of the long-term average is nice to see.
NOAA has this posted for May-June-July, suggesting we can expect the chances of warmer temperatures and less than normal precipitation coming up.
My last year of snow surveys – 40 some years ago – was, in some ways, the hardest one. Jay Penney was out on medical leave with congestive heart failure, Tom Engel had transferred to Phoenix, and I was handling both the Flathead and Kootenai drainages with help from the Forest Service. I can’t say enough good about those guys – over six months, I’d meet a new sidekick daily, few that I’d work with twice, and only one screwed up a snowmobile – and I could still drive it out without a ski (the old Alpines had only one ski, and it didn’t take much of a blunder in reverse to break it off).
In April I could confidently comment on the status of the snowpack. Then, telemetry was new. Today, we have a website and the graph does a good job of showing how the snowpack data gets a lot more solid at the end of March.
This next graph does a great job of showing why the measurements are in snow-water equivalents instead of just the depth of snow. The green peaks show individual snow storms, and how quickly the snow settles from the fluffy snowflakes.
So where are we? As of 04/03/21, these are the numbers.
Snow Water
Percent of Average
Stahl Peak
27.0 inches
78 %
Grave Creek
11.2 inches
81 %
Banfield Mountain
13.7 inches
77 %
Hawkins Lake
20.8 inches
84 %
Garver Creek
8.8 inches
96 %
Poorman Creek
29.5 inches
83 %
If I were running the numbers, I’d say we’re on the light side of normal – but it isn’t my call. It is interesting to note that none of my measurements are left in the 30-year average.
45 years ago, it took a week’s effort on a Ski-doo Alpine to get the data I can download in 10 minutes. We were high-tech then – two tracks and a single ski on each snow machine, and clockwork powering the recorders that kept track of the water equivalent setting on the snow pillow. Now there are fewer stations – and the missing Bald Eagle Peak data reminds me of the winter climbs up the mountain, carrying the heavy sampling tubes, on snowshoes. Probably the hardest work of all, and that data collection no longer maintained.
The simple description of the snowpack is that it is a bit lower than average, but next month will provide enough data for the NRCS hydrologist to start projecting data. We always tried to have the measurements done for the first of the month, so I looked on January 31. The ten-minute download from the places I once spent the better part of a week getting to is:
Water Equivalent
Percent of Average
Banfield Mountain
10.4 inches
87%
Hawkins Lake
15.5 inches
96%
Garver Creek
7.1 inches
103%
Stahl Peak
20.7 inches
89%
Grave Creek
8.6 inches
81%
Poorman Creek
17.1 inches
75%
Bear Mountain
30.2 inches
82%
Hand Creek
6.0 inches
81%
Noisy Basin
23.0 inches
90%
To get to the data – and the map – you just click https://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/snow/ . It also provides elevations of the sites so you can get a great idea of how the winter snow is up high. Making the data so readily available makes hydrology a science for everyone.
Trego's Mountain Ear 