Drought worsens

By Jennifer McKee of The Standard State Bureau - 03/23/2005

HELENA — Drought continues to tighten its hold on Montana, as evidenced by February being the driest in the 111 years for which records exist, officials said Tuesday.

Every part of the state received less than 40 percent of normal precipitation last month, Gina Loss, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Great Falls, told the Governor's Drought Advisory Council.

February was the fourth month in a row in which Montana received less than average snow or rain.

Montana's has seen the sixth driest winter on record, Loss said.

Already, agriculture is suffering, said Peggy Stringer of the Montana Agricultural Statistics Service in Helena. A full 91 percent of winter wheat fields now lack any snow cover at all. And 85 percent of the topsoil in the state is either short or very short of water. Some 91 percent of soil beneath the surface is in the same dry shape.

In at least two counties — Fergus and Petroleum — ranchers are reporting that streams and ponds are dry and wells are going dry, Stringer said. Ranchers there are already beginning to remove young calves from their herds.

But Stringer said all is not lost. Timely spring and summer rains could still produce decent crops, as they did last year when farmers and ranchers limped into spring only to receive slim — but timely — rains yielding decent crops.

Ray Nelson of the Northern Rockies Fire Coordination Center in Missoula said it's too early to guarantee a bad fire season. While conditions in Montana are bad, it's not necessarily snow or the lack of it that points to imminently bad fire seasons, he said. ‘‘June moisture, that's the best predictor of a fire season,'' he said.

Still, Montana's forests ‘‘have no surplus'' of water, Nelson said, and are flammable enough to begin burning any time.

Most major river basins in the state are now well behind average in terms of snowpack, said Roy Kaiser of the Natural Resources Conservation Service's Snow, Water and Climate Services in Bozeman.

West of the divide, four of the five major basins are at record-low levels of snowpack, with only the Kootenai basin spared, he said.