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February 5, 2025 It is STILL a dry..........

The month of January saw sporadic rain/snow across the western US. The image above shows the Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) for the various basins. The Upper Bear is about where the black circle is. You can see the Pacific NW has continued to get the storms with basins in the 100% to 170% of average. This is typical for an El Nino year (I have read) the storms tend to stay up northward. The Bear Lake area is in a transition zone....some storms will come down that far south and others will not. Below, the graph on the left shows the Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) for the Upper Bear as of January 31, 2024. The basin had a very dry January getting only about 50% of average SWE. But thanks to the storm over the first couple days of February the basin has moved up to about 95% of average. This sounds pretty good but due to the overall dry early couple of months of the water year the soil moisture is much less than last year at this time, especially at the 8" and 20" levels below the surface. It is moisture at these levels that impacts the snowpack run off more than the surface moisture content.

To give a little perspective of how this year is shaping up, the bar graph on the left shows the precipitation by year and month since 2015. The top of the bright blue boxes is January 31 of each year. We are behind the average this year. Interestingly but not surprising, in the right image, if you overlay onto the bar chart the Bear Lake water level )shown on the right) it's easy to see how the up/down of the lake water follows generally the annual precipitation. We all know that but the approximate 3 year cycle is interesting I think. Bear Lake water level rose slightly in January and currently is 5917.59 feet.

The streamflow forecasts as of February 1st are out. Pease remember that this early in the winter the forecasts are subject to change based on conditions in the next 3 months. That said, the chart on the left below is streamflow forecast April through July from the NCRS for the Bear River. The legend is at the bottom but basically each line has 5 values. The middle value (bolded) is the 50:50 forecast for the area and time indicated. For Steward Dam the April-July forecast is for 58 thousand acre feet (kaf). This is down from the January forecast of 119 kaf. And the February forecast is well below average seen. The chart on the right below is from the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center (CRBFC) which uses a different streamflow forecast model from NRCS. The chart shown is for the forecast flow at Stewart Dam, just upstream from Rainbow Canal inflow to Mud Lake. This forecast shows a 50:50 probability of 85 kaf of flow for this spring. This is down from the January forecast of 124 kaf and well below the CBRFC average value of 161 kaf. But again, the early forecasts can change. We had a huge snowfall last year in March-April. Maybe we'll repeat this year. Fingers crossed for sure.

I want to give a special thanks to Connely Baldwin for helping me understand the differences in the way the NRCS and CBRFC/NOAA calculate their streamflow forecasts. Thanks Connely.

The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center's forecast for February 2025 in our area is for equal chance of above or below temperature but maybe slightly wetter conditions. The seasonal forecast for Jan-Feb-March is still for equal chances of above or below temperature and precipitation.

As always I want to thank the folks at NCRS, CBRFC, RMP and all the others who help me compile the Splashback.

BEAR LAKE WATER LEVEL February 5, 2025 5917.59 feet*

*All Bear Lake Elevations are given in UP&L Datum