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Farmers, ranchers fear drought after parched March
Mountain
snowpacks are
above average, but
a dry spring could
affect water supply,
crop yields
By JAYSON JACOBY,
ANTONIO SIERRA
and SEAN HART
EO Media Group
M
ud is a symbol of
spring in Northeast
Oregon nearly as reli-
able as the bright yel-
low buttercup and the soft green of
a wheat field.
But Wes Morgan isn’t seeing
much mud this spring.
Plenty of snow, in places.
And in others, clouds of dust roil-
ing behind his rig when he drives an
unpaved road.
But the mucky sludge that clogs
truck tires and spatters windshields
during the transition from winter to
summer has been conspicuous in
2021 by its absence, said Morgan,
who manages the Burnt River Irri-
gation District in southern Baker
County.
The contrast between the moun-
tains, where the snow still lay deep
the first week of April, and the
already arid lowlands, was much
more distinct than usual for the sea-
son, Morgan said.
“It’s a strange spring we’ve had,”
he said on April 5.
The situation is promising in one
respect.
With the snowpack above aver-
age in most parts of the region as
April began, irrigation water sup-
plies from some reservoirs should
be good this summer, Morgan said.
The reservoir he manages —
Unity — was at 82% of capacity in
early April, and Morgan was prepar-
ing to release more water from the
reservoir to make room for the melt-
ing snow that will flow in over the
next couple months.
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian FIle
An irrigation line waters fields along Lorenzen Road in rural Umatilla County on Friday, July 17, 2020.
“IF A RAINSTORM KEEPS ME OUT OF THE FIELDS,
I’M OK WITH THAT.”
— Mark Ward, Farmer
The snowpack is especially pro-
digious in the northern Blue Moun-
tains, where the water content in the
snow at High Ridge, near Tollgate,
was 70% above average the first
week of April.
But those dust clouds have Mor-
gan worried.
He worries about the owners of
rangelands and pastures that don’t
have access to water stored in reser-
voirs such as Unity.
He worries about drought.
The continuation of drought, to
be specific.
According to the U.S. Drought
Monitor Index, as of the first week
of April a drought that started last
summer persists in much of Baker
County, with conditions ranging
from moderate to severe in much
of the central part of the county,
with a roughly oval-shaped zone
of extreme drought in part of the
county that includes Baker Valley.
The situation prompted the Baker
County Board of Commissioners on
April 7 to declare a drought disaster
in the county and to ask Gov. Kate
Brown as well as U.S. Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack to follow
suit.
State and federal drought decla-
rations could make county farmers
and ranchers eligible for financial
aid, and give state water regulators
more flexibility in allocating water
this summer.
Elsewhere in the region, the
southern part of Union County was
in either moderate drought or rated
as abnormally dry, while the north-
ern part of the county, along with all
of Wallowa County and the eastern
part of Umatilla County, are rated as
normal.
A compressed winter
Mark Bennett, a Baker County
commissioner who also owns a cat-
tle ranch in the southern part of the
county, like Morgan has watched,
with similar trepidation, as clouds
of dust billowed behind his pickup
truck early this spring.
Bennett attributes this arid pre-
dicament to a couple of factors.
First, and most obviously, is the
2020 drought. Like another scourge
— the COVID-19 pandemic — the
drought has lingered into 2021 in
Baker County.
But Bennett said the rapid shift
from damp, wintry conditions to
dusty soil more typical of August
than of April also reflects the nature
of the past winter.
Most notably, that much of the
winter’s chilly power was packed
into the middle of February.
The largest share of the season’s
snow in the valleys — especially
in the Columbia Basin — fell from
Feb. 9-18, when an onslaught of arc-
tic air pushed south from Canada.
March was tranquil by contrast.
Also much drier than average.
The Eastern Oregon Regional
Airport in Pendleton, for instance,
recorded just 0.32 of an inch of pre-
cipitation during the month, one
inch below average.
The Baker City Airport’s March
total was a paltry 0.14 of an inch, less
than one-quarter of average.
The La Grande Airport was
damp by comparison, but even
its March total of 1.15 inches was
almost a third of an inch below
average.
Bennett said that once the valley
snow had melted after the arctic out-
break in February, winter was all but
over.
“Once the frost went out of the
ground, it just became dry,” he said.
Morgan’s rising reservoir is no
consolation for Bennett, either —
the ranch he and his wife, Patti, own
is outside the irrigation district and
doesn’t get any water from Unity
Reservoir.
“Those of us who depend on
non-storage water, it’ll be a tough
year,” Bennett said.
But he quickly amends that
unequivocal prediction.
The potential savior, as always
for farmers and ranchers who toil
in the considerable rain shadow cast
by the Cascade Mountains, is spring
rain.
See Drought, Page 3