03May 2022 by Nicole Rinaldi

Drought conditions improving with recent rainfalls

Idaho News
By Corey Evan; Independent Enterprise PAYETTE — On April 25, Payette County Emergency Manager Adam Gonzalez gave the Payette County Board of Commissioners an update on the present state of drought conditions in Payette County. At the board’s regular meeting, he said that recent rainfall had helped improve things over where the county stood a month prior. “There’s a lot of discussion about drought. I wanted to get ahead of the discussion a bit,” said Gonzalez to the board. “I know the Governor’s had some … discussion about it.” In discussions with Payette Irrigation District Water Master Neil Shippy, he said Shippy determined that the recent rainstorms have been a big boon for local water storage, especially the Cascade Reservoir. Gonzalez cited an Idaho SNOTEL Current Snow Water Equivalent report,…
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15Mar 2022 by Nicole Rinaldi

Snowpack, water supply depend on March rains

Idaho News
By Hannah Ashton; Magic Valley Times News Snow falls as the water flows Wednesday, March 9, 2022, at Auger Falls in Twin Falls.Drew Nash, Times News TWIN FALLS — Idaho broke water records in March — not the good kind. Across the state SNOTEL — Snowpack Telemetry sites — hit record low precipitation levels for January to March. Many of the data sets go back 40 years, making officials with the Idaho Water Supply Committee even more nervous. “Since about Jan. 7, we’ve really had a failure of normal precipitation in the state,” said David Hoekema, hydrologist with the Idaho Department of Water Resources, during the March committee meeting. The snow water equivalent (SWE), which stands for how much water is in the snowpack if it melted, has “dramatically decreased,”…
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