Julie Koeberle isn’t calling the situation dire just yet.
But as the Northwest’s snowpack continues to languish from an unusually dry fall and early winter, the region’s mountains could use some help.
“It doesn’t hurt to start the snow dance now,” said Koeberle, a hydrologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Portland.
Several areas of western Washington had less than half of their normal snowpack for this time of year as of Friday, according to the NRCS. That includes the Lower Columbia basin of Southwest Washington, at just 33 percent of normal. Parts of eastern Washington have fared better, but still are well below normal.
In Oregon, conditions are even worse. Large swaths of western and southern Oregon have collected only 17 or 18 percent of their normal snowpack for this time of year, according to the NRCS. The Mount Hood area’s snowpack was 22 percent of normal as of Friday.
If the trend continues, the entire region could see low stream flows, low reservoirs and a strained water supply by next spring and summer, Koeberle said. The resulting ripple effect could impact regional agriculture, ecology and power generation.
For now, there’s this silver lining: A lot of winter still to come.
“We don’t want to sound any alarms yet,” Koeberle said. “We’ve had some years where we’ve had really low (snowpack), and we’ve recovered really late in the season.
“But we’ve also had some years where we didn’t.”
The drier-than-usual conditions stretch back farther than just the past few months. And the trend has affected more than just snowpack.
Including rainfall, 2013 was the fourth-driest year in Vancouver records, according to the National Weather Service in Portland. Some Oregon cities recorded their driest years.
Washington had droughts in 2001 and 2005, and was on alert in 2010 before conditions improved. If needed, the state can authorize relief funds and declare an emergency in response.
So far, the state’s two top drought committees haven’t yet been activated, said Dan Partridge, a spokesman with the state Department of Ecology’s Water Resources Program. Officials are watching conditions closely, he said, and the coming weeks and months will determine whether that process is set in motion.
“Pretty much the attitude at this point is that we still have time to wait and see,” Partridge said.
The region likely won’t see significant moisture for at least the next several days, according to the National Weather Service. But even one good storm can give snowpack a major boost, Koeberle said.
“We have had some decent storms, but it just hasn’t been consistent enough to build us up to normal levels,” Koeberle said.
