High Desert snowpack catching up, but might be too late

The new snow Central Oregon has seen lately would seem to help to ease the low-snowpack problem some irrigation districts face after this winter, but that might not be the case.

The new snowfall indeed will add to the meager snowpack levels we’ve seen so far this winter. A couple days ago, those levels were at 25 percent of normal for this point in the season — now it’s about 50-60 percent.

But it might be too late to make a difference. In order for snow to become viable snowpack, it needs to have time to harden. Unless the rest of winter and most of spring is cold and snowy enough, that might not happen.

The consistency of the snow is a factor, too.

“We don’t have near the moisture content in it that we would like to see, so even though we got several inches of snow, that doesn’t equal very much water whenever it comes off,” Three Sisters Irrigation District ditch rider Jim Williams said Wednesday.

Three Sisters Irrigation District relies almost exclusively on snowpack runoff to supply their clients, almost all of whom are hay farmers.

One of them said he has a well that would supply him with enough water, should Three Sisters fall short this year. But rising energy costs over the years have made that a less appealing option.

“The power rates have gone out of sight,” Keith Cyrus said. “It used to be that power was surplus, and you got irrigation rates. We could turn the wells on and run what we needed, and the neighbors got the rest of it.”

But now, doing that would be prohibitively expensive.