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This map, left, from March 30, 2021, compared with the map from a year later, right, shows the worsening drought conditions in Northeastern Oregon.
Drought:
Continued from Page 8
Ron Rowan, who works for Beef North-
west in North Powder, a company that oper-
ates four cattle feedlots and three grow
yards, agrees.
“It doesn’t look good right now in a lot of
areas in the Northwest,” Rowan said.
About 30 miles north of Bennett, as the
buzzard flies, Baker Valley farmer Mark
Ward was also worried.
After a series of snowstorms in late
December and early January bolstered the
mountain snowpack — a vital source of irri-
gation water for farmers and ranchers — the
rest of the winter was abnormally dry.
February was the driest on record at the
Baker City Airport, where statistics date to
1943.
Just 0.01 of an inch of precipitation was
measured at the airport during the month —
scarcely enough to dampen the ground.
“The concern level is high,” Ward said in
early March. “This could be worse than last
year. And last year was the worst I’ve ever
seen.”
Based on the snowpack, the prospects for
2022 are more dire than a year ago.
At the start of March 2021, the snowpack
in Northeastern Oregon was about 29% above
average.
A year later, it was 15% below average.
“We didn’t get anything in January and
February,” said Ward, whose family raises
potatoes, peppermint, wheat and alfalfa. “We
didn’t add to the snowpack.”
The situation isn’t completely bleak,
though.
Ward said widespread rain during the fall
of 2021, before the ground froze and the snow
came, helped to replenish soil moisture in his
family’s fields.
“We’re ahead of where we were last year as
far as ground moisture in the fields,” he said.
But that’s not the case everywhere.
As Bennett’s observations on his place
show, the soil remains depleted of moisture in
other parts of the region.
The southern part of Baker County typi-
cally is drier than the northern areas, includ-
ing Baker Valley, Bennett said.
Pining for precipitation
Regardless of the geographic differences,
both Bennett and Ward agree that, with the
time dwindling for a major reversal in the
snowpack, the much more plausible potential
for improving the situation is a soggy spring.
This is hardly the farfetched wish of the
desperate.
Ward and Bennett said they recall mul-
tiple years when timeline rains during the
spring partially offset the negative effects of
a skimpy snowpack.
Rains from April through June have the
obvious benefit of nourishing crops just as
they’re beginning to grow.
But significant rain during spring can also
allow irrigation district officials to store most
of the snowmelt in reservoirs rather than dol-
ing it out to keep fields damp.
Unlike the western side of Oregon, where
fall and winter are the wettest seasons, in
much of Eastern Oregon the best chance for
prolonged precipitation is spring.
At Baker City Airport, for instance, May
is the wettest month on average, and June
ranks second.
And no other month comes close to that
two-month stretch.
May’s average rainfall is 1.42 inches, and
June’s is 1.26 inches.
December ranks a distant third, with an
average of .91 of an inch.
Rainfall is more evenly distributed at the
Eastern Oregon Regional Airport in Pend-
leton, with December (1.56 inches), January
(1.49) and November (1.43) the three damp-
est months.
But May is the fifth-wettest, with an aver-
age of 1.18 inches, and April ranks seventh
at 1.08 inches.
At Milton-Freewater, May is also the
fifth-wettest month. March is the fourth-wet-
test, and April ranks sixth.
At Wallowa, May is the third-wettest
month, and June ranks fifth.
Don Wysocki, a soil scientist with the Ore-
gon State University Extension in Umatilla
County, said rain this spring would be a boon
for dryland farmers.
“Stands look better than the weather would
justify, but we need more moisture from now
to June,” Wysocki said. “We need timely
rains to make an average crop. Without a wet
spring, it’ll be another disaster like last year.
Wash your car, cut your hay, whatever it takes
to make it rain.”
The National Weather Service doesn’t hold
out much hope, though, that Northeastern
Oregon will get enough rain during the rest of
this growing season to make up for the deficit.
“I wouldn’t hang my coat on any signif-
icant improvement in the near future,” said
lead meteorologist Roger Cloutier at the
NWS office in Pendleton during a March
28 interview. “You have to take three-
month forecasts with a grain of salt, but
the April, May and June outlook in North-
east Oregon is for below normal precipi-
tation. That’s from the Climate Prediction
Center. We don’t make (such long-term)
forecasts locally.”
See Drought, Page 11