BOISE, Idaho — Mother Nature delivered a strong snowpack this season and that means plenty of water for irrigators, a good season for kayakers and rafters, and it looks like there will be carryover for next year.
The Idaho Water Supply Committee held their monthly meeting to look at the data and prepare for the future. This year we will not be talking about drought, but there is a possibility of flooding, especially in the southwest section of the state.
"We are looking really good in terms of our snowpack, especially in western Idaho," said Erin Whorton, a water supply specialist with the National Resources Conservation Service. " We have a really good snowpack in the southern part of the state as well."
The Weiser River Basin had 136 percent of average in snow water equivalent, the Payette sits at 130 percent, the Owyhee at 125 percent, and the Boise is at 123 percent of average.
These will also be the basins most prone to flooding in Idaho and there is also the Malheur River Basin which already flooded in February and has plenty of snow left in the Blue Mountains. Now the question becomes how will run-off happen and how fast will the snow melt.
"It’s not a crazy year, but it is always a big issue because if temperatures warm up fast and the snow hits that point where it is ready to come off the mountain it can come fast," said David Hoekema, a hydrologist with the Idaho Department of Water Resources. "At this point, we are not seeing an indication of that, but we are just at the beginning of the snow melt stage."
At the meeting, we learned that the Army Corps of Engineers does not expect the Boise River to fill its banks. They already started releasing water last week to guard against flooding as they use data from several federal and state agencies including the NRCS.
"They have a really hard balancing act of saving enough water for irrigators, but also making sure that the folks downstream are safe from floods," said Whorton. "They do a wonderful job."
Putting the puzzle together also starts with the data from measuring the snowpack. I went up to Mores Creek where there are feet of snow and Bogus Basin also hit a milestone when it reached 100 inches back on Thursday.
The rivers and streams are starting to run as much of the snow has melted from lower elevations, but with all the snow at higher elevations, it means plenty of water for this year as nearly all of the Idaho river basins made it to 100 percent of average.
There is already water flowing down the New York Canal out of Lucky Peak.
"They are expecting they will have to pass 50 to 60 percent of the spring runoff in their flood control operations which means we will have a full water supply," said Hoekema.
A strong February helped most of the eastern Idaho basins reach 100 percent, the ones that didn't are the Henry's Fork at 98 percent, the Little Lost at 98 percent and the Birch-Medicine Lodge-Beaver-Camas area at 88 percent, but that is an area that features streams and not rivers.
Northern Idaho was also under 100 percent with the Clearwater at 98 percent, the Northern Panhandle Region at 96 percent and the Spokane River Basin at 87 percent which is the lowest in the entire state.
