Sean C. Morgan
Up until last week, to state the obvious, this year has been wet.
To date, more than twice as much rain has fallen compared to the same time last year – Jan. 1 through the mid-point in February, but the actual rainfall has been closer to the normal amount that has fallen in recent years in the Sweet Home area.
As of Feb. 17, 15.68 inches of rain had fallen at the Foster Lake powerhouse. Last year, as of Feb. 18, 7.61 inches had fallen.
As of Friday, the pool at Green Peter Reservoir was at 951 feet (above sea level), 28 percent of full pool, slightly behind the “rule curve” for the lake, said Lauren Bennett, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers public affairs specialist; and Foster was at 620 feet, 29 percent, just ahead of its rule curve.
The “rule curve” is the pool level at which Congress has authorized the Corps to manage its water on each individual day, Bennett said. The Corps could be filling Green Peter a little more, while it will release water a little faster at Foster.
Lake water is being released sufficiently for downstream uses, such as habitat and irrigation, she said.
“I think we had decent precipitation from January into early February,” Bennett said. “It hasn’t been an issue.”
The Willamette basin dam projects are primarily refilled by rain, with some refilling based on snow pack during the summer, Bennett said. Overall, it’s still early in the year to tell how the weather will impact the lakes.
“One of the differences this year, we had kind of a drier fall,” said Rebecca Muessle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland. An atmospheric river brought a lot of rain to the Northwest in early February.
“With all of that rain, we did have some flooding,” Muessle said. “Most of it was coastal river flooding.”
Other rivers ran at higher levels than usual, she said, but it wasn’t drastic or unusual.
Recent years have been dry early in the winter, with a minor fire season being declared in Oregon during January a couple of years ago.
This “is a more typical kind of winter for the Pacific Northwest,” Muessle said. NWS weather monitoring shows 9.25 inches for Salem so far this year. The 30-year average there is 9.44 inches. “We’re really kind of where we should be.”
It’s hard to say where the weather will go right now, she said. The Northwest could see a late snow, like last year, or it could have another big rain event.
“This time of year, anything can happen,” Muessle said Friday as a system was inbound from Alaska and expected to bring rain and wind late in the weekend. “It’s still winter,” and the weather can range from “absolutely beautiful” to “crummy.”
Oregon Department of Forestry tracks rainfall at its Sweet Home Unit.
For 2019, it tracked 46.44 inches of rain, 88 percent of normal on a 25-year average, said Forest Protection Supervisor Neil Miller. Normal is 52.83 inches.
A typical January has 6.74 inches of rain, Miller said. This year, January saw 10.17 inches rain fall at the Sweet Home Unit, located at the intersection of Main Street and 47th Avenue. ODF had recorded about 3 inches of rain so far in February as of last week, which is about half of normal for the entire month.
“We were actually kind of shy of moisture going into the fall,” Miller said. Going forward, “I’ve not heard a real good prediction.”
While “call me in November” is the most accurate way to answer questions about weather, Miller said, early predictions are for above normal temperatures and drier weather the next three months.
With a dry fall but a wet winter, “big picture, we’re probably pretty good,” Miller said. What happens with the summer fire season will depend on what happens in the next two to three months.