Snowpack ‘Good’ Across Montana
Montana State Water Supply Specialist Lucas Zukiewicz With the Natural Resources Conservation Service says Montana snowpack is “good” and that there were a few water records achieved during the past water year, which began in October.
"October was record breaking for precipitation, if we look at some of our valley locations, some of our major cities actually hit record water precipitation: Billings, Polson and Kalispell all had record water precipitation so far, and Missoula is not that far off at second."
There are no particular records for snowpack statewide, but there has been a radical change in the snowpack picture.
"Yeah, if we look at the state as a whole, we have a pretty healthy snowpack for May 1st. We've seen some pretty good improvements in the areas over April that were slightly below or close to record lows on April 1st coming in at May 1st we have pretty normal conditions. Looking at the Northwest and West of the divide, we have snowpack that is well above normal for May 1st."
Zukiewicz says there is only one area in the state that is below normal for snowpack, namely the Smith-Judith-Musselshell basin in the center of the state.