Monday, April 12, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Western drought retains tight grip

Warm, dry March melts snowpack, increasing wildfire threats and depleting water supplies

Douglas Hutchinson of the U.S. Geological Survey measures the flow rate and volume of the Truckee River near Reno on Tuesday. AP Photo Click image for enlargement.

RENO -- From the brittle hillsides of Southern California to the drying fields of Idaho, from Montana to New Mexico, a relentless drought is worsening across most of the West, where a once-promising snowpack is shrinking early, water supplies are dwindling, and the threat of wildfires is already on the rise.

"Most of the West is headed into six years of drought, and some areas are looking at seven years of drought," said Rick Ochoa, weather program manager at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

Arizona faces its worst drought on record.

New Mexico farmers are bracing for dramatic reductions in water supplies, and in parts of southeast Idaho, the only farmers who will get water this summer might be those with water rights dating to the late 1800s.

On the edge of the Sierra, lingering drought is pitting residents against the Reno country club that hosts a national golf tournament in a battle over water from a mountain creek.

"Some part of the West has been in a state of drought since the winter of 1995-96," said Kelly Redmond, regional climatologist for the Desert Research Institute's Western Regional Climate Center in Reno.

"For the last year or two, it has extended all the way from the Mexican border to Canada pretty consistently," he said.

An unusually warm, dry March melted snowpack and increased wildfire threats, especially in southeast Oregon, half of Arizona, most of New Mexico and parts of Colorado.

The U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service forecasts the potential for water restrictions and widespread crop and pasture losses in central Nevada, southern Idaho, most of south-central Montana and eastern and southwestern Utah.

"Drought? What drought? It rained here a couple of years ago," said Dick Larsen, spokesman for the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

He's straining for humor because most of southern Idaho is in a category the U.S. Agriculture Department calls "exceptional drought," along with parts of southwest Montana.

That's a step worse than "extreme drought," which the USDA says best describes the condition of other parts of Nevada, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Colorado.

Those states are heavily dependent on melting snow for water supplies, snow that has rapidly disappeared the past month across the region.

Snowpack showed half or less the normal March precipitation level in the Intermountain West, Southwest, northern Rockies, central Idaho, Oregon and California. The driest basins were in central Arizona, where less than 70 percent of normal seasonal precipitation was reported.

Most of the West was "sitting reasonably well" at the end of February, Redmond said.

"A lot of places had near-average snowpack. But we had one of the warmest Marches on record across, and we didn't get any precipitation almost anywhere in the West," he said.

"So not only did we not add to our supply in March, which is usually a very healthy month, but the temperature was so warm that the melting started early," he said.

Significant snowmelt into the Merced River at Yosemite National Park in California began on its earliest date in 87 years, Redmond said.

"The situation has been repeated all over the West," he said.

In Idaho, "the further south and east you go, the worse it gets," Larsen said.

One of the hardest hit areas is in the southeast corner of the state at Bear Lake, which provides water to parts of Idaho, Wyoming and Utah.

"They are looking at historic low levels of water. It's entirely possible there will be no irrigation water available for farmers down there," Larsen said.

Arizona is on the verge of its worst drought in recorded history, according to John Sullivan, associate general manager of the Salt River Project's water group.

For nine years running, precipitation and runoff into the Phoenix area's reservoirs have been far less than normal, and the state has recorded four of its five driest years of the century in the past 10 years, hydrologist Charlie Ester said.

Two-thirds of New Mexico is in severe drought condition or worse, said Dan Murray, water supply specialist for the USDA's conservation service in Albuquerque, N.M.

"In the northern part of the state, we get our peak snowpack about April 1, but this year it pretty much peaked out about the first week of March."

That could mean a shortage of the water New Mexico shares with Texas and especially hurt the city of Sante Fe, which gets much of its water from the Santa Fe River, Murray said.

The warmest March since 1934 was recorded in Reno, where residents have asked the state engineer to re-evaluate the Montreux Golf & Country Club's use of water from Galena Creek. They don't care about the PGA Tour and the Reno-Tahoe Open. They say there won't be enough water for their pastures.

"You are going to have a new range war, the farmers and ranchers against the golf courses," Rick Taras, president of the Big Ditch Co., told the Reno-Gazette Journal last week.

In contrast, some parts of the West -- western Oregon, Washington and Northern California west of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada -- have near normal snowpack.

The overall water supply situation in California statewide is "not great, but it's OK," said Frank Gehrke, chief of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources.

There's more concern about moisture in the soils and forests and the potential for another year of raging wildfires.

"In that respect, Southern California is not doing particularly well. They've had quite a few dry years in a row and certainly didn't do much catch-up this season," Gehrke said.