Experts say Montana emerging from drought

HELENA – Montana appears to be emerging from its seven-year drought, with average to above-average mountain snowpack and widespread spring rain leading experts to issue the best water supply outlook since 1997.

A year ago, 20 of the state’s 56 counties were plagued by severe drought. Today, reports show all but six counties are considered drought-free, and severe conditions persist in just one – Carbon County.

Soil moisture levels are also way above last year at this time, fire danger is low, and most reservoirs are rising. And initial forecasts included in a 2006 drought outlook report show conditions are likely to stay rosy for a while, with the National Climate Prediction Center forecasting average precipitation and cooler-than-normal temperatures from June to August.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Gina Loss, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Great Falls and member of the Governor’s Drought Advisory Committee, which will discuss the report at its meeting today. “We’re actually looking pretty good.”

While Montanans have heard such guarded optimism before, what makes this drought forecast different is its uniformity, experts say.

The state experienced brief respites from the drought in 2004 and 2005, but progress was spotty and quickly erased by any period of hot, dry weather, said Jesse Aber, a staff member for the drought committee and water resources planner for the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

This year, snowpack is holding steady around the state, and rain is falling nearly everywhere, markedly improving conditions across the board.

Precipitation for nearly the entire state is 150 percent of normal this month, with many areas reporting as much as eight times their usual precipitation, Loss said.

Great Falls is reporting its wettest water year since 1966, with similar marks being set in Billings, Bozeman, Helena, Lewistown and Miles City, she said.

“That’s the really great thing,” Loss said. “It isn’t just one area. This really has been a month of wide distribution. It’s been great precipitation.”

But, as always, things could change at any time, experts said. And Aber stressed in the report that more time is needed to fully recover from Montana’s longest and most severe period of drought since the 1930s.

Ray Nelson of the Northern Rockies Fire Coordination Center also cautioned that while heavy spring rain means low fire danger now, measurements of how hot a fire will burn and how difficult a fire will be to extinguish tend to rise with the July heat.