Southern Oregon Drought?

Seems like every couple of years we have a winter that just doesn’t really show up. Although in my time in Southern Oregon, never quite as missing as this. Don’t get me wrong, we had a long cold snap in December, and the valley floor got and kept more snow on the ground than any time in my memory.

However, the snow in the mountains has been missing. A whole year is probably going to pass without Mt.Ashland opening.

But invariably, a wet spring follows a dry winter here. And the signs of that are happening. But if you have the question “is that enough rain?”, then here are the 2 websites I like to go to to see how we are fairing in the water for summer department.

The first is the Bureau of Reclamation  page that shows how full our Southern Oregon reservoirs are. At the time of my writing of this, Howard and Hyatt are both at 55% and Emigrant is at 43%. But follow that link to see where those levels are on the day you are reading this.

The second is how much snow is there at Crater Lake. The National Park Service puts out a daily bulletin with snow accumulation current and average.  That report can be found here.  As of the writing of this we are at 43% of average snow depth for this time of year.

So that all being said, the spring rain that is forecasted to be coming through the area this week is hopefully wet and can make up for the dry January.