C.O. snowpack off to promising start – but there’s a but

Using a shovel, Deschutes Basin Watermaster Jeremy Giffin brushed snow off solar panels powering a monitoring station on Cultus stream Wednesday.

“Just trying to troubleshoot what the problem is and get the gauge reporting again,” Giffin said.

Using a Sno-Cat, Giffin traveled 25 miles in the Cultus Lake area, repairing broken gauges on a couple of the basin’s 50 monitoring stations.

He also uses the excursions as an opportunity to check out Central Oregon’s snowpack with his own eyes, rather than the automated telemetry readings.

“We have about three feet of snow here right now. Last year, we had about a foot,” Giffin said. “We like to look at it like money in the bank — we have all this snow sitting up here, and we know it’s going to melt eventually and enter into the aquifer.”

It’s a welcome sight after two years of extreme drought that decimated all three local reservoirs.

“We were worried,” Giffin said.

He and others are now a little more optimistic. The snowpack is at 138 percent of average in the Deschutes Basin. That’s about four times more snow than this time last year. Precipitation is 126 percent of average.

It looks promising, given that winter is just nine days old — but it’s not all good news. Streamflows are still well below average, and not expected to fully recover in the new year.

“We’ve really depleted that spring system,” Giffin said, adding that many of Central Oregon’s rivers and streams uniquely rely on underground aquifers. “We’re probably not going to get out of the drought in one year.”

Still, it’s a start. Giffin measured Cultus Creek at flows about three times higher than this time last year. For an average year, streamflows will need to increase by at least ten times before spring.

At the nearby Cultus River, Giffin found flows well below average. He said his measurements Tuesday were the lowest ever collected by a physical check of the system.

The gauges are set to constantly upload streamflows online, but water officials often manually measure the flows, to ensure equipment is reporting accurately.

There’s no promises Central Oregon will continue to see heavy snowfall. Forecasters have predicted a warm, wet winter that could yield a milder season than usual.

“If the snow stops coming, we could be in bad shape next year,” Giffin said. “Hopefully, with the rest of upcoming winter, we can keep these numbers nice and high.”

You can monitor Oregon basins snowpack and precipitation yourself here: http://wcc.sc.egov.usda.gov/reports/UpdateReport.html?report=Oregon