April ends on dry note

As we say goodbye to April, we’re left with low snowpack levels in our local mountains.

Despite a few good storms, including the snowstorm April 14, we’re still coming up short on our local water storage. We will likely seewater curtailments for growers with junior water rights.

Over the past snow season, eastern Idaho and western Wyoming did see some good snowstorms, more so than southern and western Idaho. In our “peak” of winter, we did see many of our local basins reach over 100 percent capacity.

However, that was short-lived with our mild conditions and early melting. Our only saving grace will be our current reservoirlevels. They currently sit at more than 80 percent capacity, which you can expect to see drop rapidly over the summer months.

Southern and western Idaho fared much worse over the winter with few storms that produced significant snow. We can expect to see the senior water right holders in that region to demand more water from eastern Idaho.