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Phillips, were in somewhat better shape at
the end of March.
On the last day of the month, Phillips was
up to 10% of its capacity, the highest since
last summer.
McKay Reservoir south of Pendleton
was at 64% of its capacity, and Cold Springs
Reservoir east of Hermiston was at 58%.
Unity Reservoir in southern Baker
County was at 62% of capacity, and Thief
Valley Reservoir, east of North Powder,
was at 91%. Both are significantly smaller,
however, than Phillips Reservoir. Unity has
about one-third the capacity of Phillips, and
Thief Valley about 18%.
Drought:
Continued from Page 9
At the end of March, much of Northeast-
ern Oregon was either in extreme drought
— the second-worst in a five-level rating
system — or severe drought, one step below
extreme.
Conditions are somewhat better in a
swath that runs from the southern part of
Morrow County through much of Uma-
tilla County and into the eastern part of
Union County. The rating there is moderate
drought.
The rating system:
• abnormally dry
• moderate drought
• severe drought
• extreme drought
• exceptional drought
“That’s not likely to change, with fore-
casts of below normal moisture,” Cloutier
said. “For Washington, the outlook is for
below to near normal.”
“We’ve been in La Nina conditions since
the fall. In December and early January, we
got the storms that usually go with that El
Nino/Southern Oscillation state, but since
then they’ve stopped. The winter rain and
mountain snow we got then didn’t make a
dent in the drought. Now we’re headed into
ENSO neutral conditions, so less expecta-
tion of above normal precipitation.”
“What we need is slow, steady, soaking
rain, not thunderstorms that just run off,”
Cloutier said. “Almost daily light rain. But
we’re not likely to be that lucky.”
Kevin Scheibner, 51, a wheat farmer and
cow-calf rancher in upper Wildhorse Creek
near Athena, said there is no doubt the
drought has hurt producers.
“When there’s less feed in the mountains,
there’s less weight on the calves,” he said.
“But,” he added, “the price came up, so it
kind of balanced out.”
Scheibner said the prices are “Economics
101” — just supply and demand.
“It’s all about when the rains come, or
there’s grass in California, buyers might
think they can make a profit, and they’re
willing to buy,” he said.
Too late for rain
to help in some cases
But even if the spring of 2022 brings fre-
quent deluges to Northeastern Oregon, the
water will arrive too late to help some farm-
ers take advantage.
Water worries,
even where snow lingers
Bennett Hall/EO Media Group
TOP: Trever Hamsher throws out hay for cattle on Pat Voigt’s Prairie City ranch on Friday,
March 11, 2022. ABOVE: Bummer calves dig into their hay rations on Pat Voigt’s ranch near
Prairie City while a barn cat comes to investigate.
Ward, for instance, said his family won’t
plant silage corn this spring, nor will they
add any acreage in alfalfa.
“We just simply won’t have the water,” he
said. “Hope is not a tactic. We base our crop
plans on what we see, and what we see is an
empty reservoir.”
Ward was referring to Phillips Reser-
voir, the impoundment on the Powder River
about 17 miles southwest of Baker City. Its
water irrigates about 30,000 acres, mostly in
the Baker Valley.
The 2021 drought depleted the reservoir
more than in any year since it first filled in
1968.
Ward said he would be grateful if the res-
ervoir reached even half full this spring.
Most reservoirs in the region, including
Unlike Bennett, Dean Defrees didn’t
have dust to deal with in early March.
Not yet anyway.
“I still have a foot of snow on the
ground,” Defrees said on March 8.
His family’s cattle ranch and tree farm
are in Sumpter Valley, at an elevation of
about 4,200 feet in a reliably snowy part of
the county.
But even with the soft snow of late win-
ter hanging around, Defrees said he needed
only look north, to the south-facing slopes
of the Elkhorn Mountains, to recognize
the potential problems looming like the
great sedimentary wall that separates the
Sumpter and Baker valleys.
“The snow level is up pretty high,” he
said. “There’s even some bare spots around
Marble Creek Pass. For the second week of
March, that’s not a real good sign.”
The situation is if anything more dis-
tressing because winter started with such
snowy promise.
Defrees said he’s not completely aban-
doned hope for a belated resuscitation of
the snowpack that hasn’t changed much for
several weeks.
He said his dad, Lyle Defrees, recalls
a distant spring when 20 inches of snow
mantled the Sumpter Valley on the 20th of
April.
But even if such an unseasonable storm
doesn’t materialize, Dean Defrees, like
Ward and Bennett, remains optimistic for
the prospect of the sort of moist spring that
not so many years ago seemed more likely
than not.
But if this spring replicates the 2021 ver-
sion, when rainstorms were few, it could be
“a total disaster,” Defrees said.
See Drought, Page 13