Montana Waits And Waits And Waits For Rain

[hatrack]

GREAT FALLS — Twice a day, National Weather Service meterologists launch a 10-foot-wide balloon with a styrofoam payload high into the sky. Sensors send data from up to 100,000 feet back an hour later, which is fed to mainframe computers in Silver Springs, Md. Those results are deciphered into a forecast and packaged in time for the evening TV news.

This winter, it's been virtually the same story, day after day after day. Montana has been stuck in a weather pattern that has driven up temperatures, siphoned off snowpack and worried farmers and wildland firefighters. A high pressure ridge has camped out for most of the winter, directing storms to the north and the south of us.

Around Helena, the evidence of drought is plain:

- February was the third-driest month since 1880

- temperatures are about 5 degrees above normal


- Lincoln has the least snow in 56 years

- what snowpack remains is melting faster than usual

- and we've had only one "cold shot" this winter — minus 25 on Jan. 15 — when normally there should be three to five.

Ready to let the lawn die and spend a wildfire-filled August elsewhere? Hang on a minute. February is typically the driest month of the year, and what happens later in March and April matters more, says Steve Brueske, meterologist-in-charge at the NWS's Great Falls office. "If you don't get anything in February, you're only down an eighth," he says. "If you don't get any rain in March or April, you're down an inch. "That's our make it or break it time."

EDIT

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2005/03/13/top/a01031305_01.txt

[havocmom]

1. The past 24 hours have brought some flurries

to my part of the State Of Drought. Folks from the Midwest and east cannot fathom how little moisture the snow has around here. Still, the flurries are a step in the right direction. We generally get some moisture about the time calving starts where I live.

It's the snow pack (or lack of) which worries me greatly. Too many high peaks are bare. Reservoirs have not filled in most places.

On the up side, beef should be very tender come fall, cuz it looks like ranchers will have to give cattle beer to drink before too long. ;)

[hatrack]

3. Your post the other day was alarming - 1/2-3/4" ground cracks in MARCH?

Not a pretty picture.

[havocmom]

4. Yeah, normally March is the month to wear your big rubber boots

and dig stuck neighbors outta muddy bogs in roads. We have had 2 days of flurries and the dog still comes in with no mud on his feet. At least the dust is settled down. Sadly, one day of wind and the ground will be dust again.

But this bit of damp comes at a good time. Saw some fields planted with winter wheat taking on a green tinge. The prairie has a slightly green hint to the gold/brown of winter.

Sadly, without a lot of rain in spring and through early summer, this may be as green as we get. It looked like this just 80 miles south of us during peak grass season last year.

And no word about our Guard troops getting home to help with fires come summer... :grr:

Geese are coming back and I think they will have a tough time raising young with reservoirs so low or dry. Ground and ground water here is extremely high in salts. The stuff being pumped by our town well leaves a white film on every surface it touches. My glassware looks awful, my garden looks like a salt leech field. I don't wanna know what the cattle are drinking.

And we will probably be treated to whining downstream that we need to release more Missouri River water to keep the 'barges' floating. :eyes: What the Gambling River Boat owners don't get is that there is no water flowing into the lakes behind the dams to send them.
Several rivers feeding our end of the Missouri just aren't there anymore. And as my granny said when I sent photos of the Missouri here to her home in St. Joe, MO, "My, it's not a very big river up at your end, is it?" And we had a huge snowpack, warm spring rains creating enormous runnoff the year I sent those photos. It was back in 79. Things have changed.

[cliss]

2. Montana is not the only one....

Washington governor Christina Gregoire declared an emergency in Washington because of the drought. She warned that eastern Washington will be particularly hard-hit this summer.

Things are not much better here in Oregon. It's dry, dry, dry. They are forecasting a serious drought this summer.