Planning for the Probable

The last three weeks have certainly been better for a fair portion of Oregon from a rainfall perspective.  We've needed it and the state still needs it.  Let's hope the forecasters are correct and the rains continue for awhile longer.   

Here a few miles NW and a few hundred feet above Grants Pass, we've had about seven inches of rain over the past three weeks.  The last storm got us above 80 percent of normal for the rain year...not disastrous, and with a nice amount of rain late in the season.  FYI, Southern Oregon measures rainfall using a rain year of 1 Sep - 31 Aug.  Since like California we very rarely rain during the summer, it's more useful to know how the wet months have gone as a whole. 

While the Siskiyous have had a good snow winter (120 inches at Mt. Ashland on this, its last skiing weekend), snow in the nearby Cascades has been lacking.  This time of year, we're usually watching snow reports from Crater Lake to see how much over 100 inches the Park is (the average is 118 inches in March, 113 inches in April).  The recent wet weather has gotten it up to 91 inches...I haven't heard how the water content of the snow is.  That flatters the snowpack in the surrounding mountains.  But, Crater Lake is a key place to watch, as it's shared by the Rogue and Klamath watersheds and is very close to the headwaters of the North Umpqua. 

The snowpack is less below average on the west side of the Cascades than the east side.  Outflow from Lost Creek Dam on the Rogue is still very low because managers are trying to build up reserves for the summer...there's still room in the reservoir.  On the other side of the Cascades, the precipitation in the Klamath Basin has been poor, worse as one goes further east.  They're having what could be their third driest year ever.  The folks there are already making a number of hard decisions regarding who/what will get how much water this year, if any.

Because of the drought, the amount mandated for fish is less than in wet years. A water bank set up to increase flows for fish has ramped up to 100,000 acre feet this year -- about a third of which goes to irrigation. Farmers are being paid $7.6 million to leave 25,000 acres dry and divert wells. Nearby wildlife refuges are contributing 15,000 acre feet.

The 30,000 acres on the east side of the irrigation project will see even sharper cutbacks. Clear Lake Reservoir, which also has endangered suckers in it, will put out nothing, and Gerber Reservoir will provide about half of normal.

The drought is likely to also affect chinook salmon in the Klamath River, where low runs anticipated this year have triggered a severe cut in ocean salmon harvests off Oregon and California.

Sabo (the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's manager for the Klamath Project) met with irrigation districts Friday to discuss rotations of three weeks on and one week off to conserve water without having to shut it off completely.

The dry this year is compounding the problems from 2002 when warmer, low-water conditions on the Klamath River hurt salmon populations.  Less salmon were already expected to return this year, and some of them may face poor river conditions when returning home.  These links show some of this year's chinook harvest cutbacks in Southern Oregon and Northern California. 

It's understandable that some state officials are worried not only about the dry year but the fact that this late precipitation could make some complacent about drought preparations and water conservation.  At least down in this neck of the woods, complacency isn't much of a problem. 

We're not quite three summers removed from the Biscuit Fire--Oregon's largest in a century--that blazed for months just a few miles west of here. That fire cost $150 million to fight, and lord knows how much more to litigate over salvage logging.  And, how many more years will it be until people aren't fighting over water in the Klamath Basin?  The farms there aren't ones that many land use proponents are interested in saving.

Dry years are expensive in so many ways.