First Snowpack Numbers Of The 2023-2024 Winter Season Only Half Of Previous Winter And Half Of Average

Anyone can probably tell that so far this winter, there hasn’t been as much snow compared to this time last year, and that could soon cause some concern in terms of drought and fire danger.

The US Department of Agriculture has released its first monthly snowpack report for the 2023-2024 winter season

Snowpack data is collected at remote sites that transmit real-time snow-water content and precipitation data via a satellite link many times throughout the month.

The data is also collected once a month manually, at the end of each month from late January to late April.

As of February 1st, snowpack numbers at both the Tongue River Drainage area and the Clear Creek Drainage area are at 48-to-54% compared to this time last year, and are at 54-to-56% compared to the 30-year average.

Andrew Cassiday is the District Conservationist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service.

He says while there’s not as much snow on the surface, there’s still moisture underground, but the recent high temperatures need to start cooling off, or else there could be some concerns.

“We still have frost in the ground, which is good. That holds the moisture in the soil. If we can stay cool enough to hold frost in the ground, we shouldn’t dry out substantially, but if we continue to be real warm and lose that frost, we’ll start to lose soil moisture and that’s really the driver for what we predict for fire and for range production.”

The National Weather Service in Billings, Montana says precipitation is in the Sheridan area forecast for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (February 7th, 8th and 9th), which should give ground moisture levels a boost.