February pulled off a feat in its 28 days that most months can’t manage in 30 or 31.

A barrage of blizzards during the shortest month boosted the snowpack in the mountains of Northeast Oregon from below average to well above.

At a few measuring sites the snowpack doubled, or nearly so, during February.

Nathan Petrucci saw blatant evidence of the month’s achievements firsthand.

Petrucci, a deputy watermaster for Baker County, wallowed through freshly fallen powder recently with another deputy watermaster, Luke Albert.

The pair’s destination was a meadow just east of Anthony Lake, in the Elkhorn Mountains about 35 miles northwest of Baker City.

This is one of Oregon’s oldest snow survey sites — crews have trudged into the meadow every winter since 1936 to sample the snow, a key element in estimating the coming summer’s water supply.

Petrucci, who also was a member of the group that measured snow in the meadow in late January, said the scene “was quite a bit different.”

The snow was almost twice as deep — 89 inches compared with 45 inches a month earlier.

“It was nice to see,” Petrucci said in an interview on March 4.

Although the depth increase was impressive, a different statistic — snow water content — is the one that matters most in gauging snowpack.

Water content, as the term implies, measures the amount of water that will trickle away when the snow melts this spring and summer.

To calculate the water content, snow surveyors such as Petrucci and Albert thrust an aluminum tube into the snow until it hits the ground. The tube measures the snow depth, and more importantly, by weighing the cylinder of snow within the tube the surveyors can derive the water content.

In that respect February’s feat wasn’t quite as noteworthy. The water content rose from 13 inches at the start of February to 22.6 inches at the end.

But that’s still a significant jump. The water content was 18% below average when February began, but it was 32% above average when the month ended.

This was the second February in the past three years that reversed a relatively moribund snowpack in the Elkhorns.

In February 2019 the snow depth at the meadow near Anthony Lake increased by 37 inches, to 83 inches at month’s end.

This year’s figure of 89 inches is the fifth-deepest, at the end of February, since snow surveys started there in 1936.

The top four:

• 109 inches, Feb. 23, 1965 (this is the deepest snow ever measured at the site, at any time; in many winters the snow depth peaks around April 1)

• 96 inches, Feb. 24, 1956

• 95 inches, Feb. 27, 1949

• 92 inches, Feb. 28, 1972

Although the onslaught of storms that distinguished February dissipated with the arrival of March, Petrucci said this week’s mainly sunny and milder weather can potentially have a benefit for the summer water supply.

The daily cycle, with the snow surface thawing during the day and refreezing at night, creates ice layers. Those layers will slow the melting of the snowpack this spring, Petrucci said.

“We like it to ice up,” he said.

Jeff Colton has the same feeling about a snowpack that disappears gradually rather than rapidly.

Colton manages the Baker Valley Irrigation District, which supplies irrigation water, stored in Phillips Reservoir between Baker City and Sumpter, to more than 30,000 acres of farmland, mostly in Baker Valley.

Colton said he was “getting a little bit scared” during January, when storms were scarce.

February’s series of storms was welcome.

“I’m thankful for every bit of it,” Colton said. “Things are looking up.”

Which is not to say Colton is completely confident about this year’s water supply.

Phillips Reservoir was severely depleted during the 2020 drought. As of today, the reservoir is holding just 10% of its capacity.

And although February bolstered the snowpack, the measuring site that Colton is most interested in has lagged behind.

That’s near Bourne, in the headwaters of the Powder River, the biggest source of water for Phillips Reservoir. The water content at Bourne improved from 23% below average at the start of February to 14% above average at month’s end.

But the latter figure is the fifth-lowest, based on percentage, among 15 sites around the region.

Colton attributes this to a microclimate that brings comparatively less snow to Bourne when the trajectory of storms favors places such as Anthony Lakes and the western part of the Elkhorns.

The measuring site nearest Bourne, at Gold Center along the Sumpter-Granite Highway, is just 8 miles or so away. But it’s on the west side of a ridge that casts a rain shadow in the Bourne area. The water content at Gold Center is 62% above average.

Although snowpack is vital, Colton said another factor can have an outsized effect on how far Phillips Reservoir rises — spring rainstorms.

“Those are godsends,” he said.

If enough rain falls during spring, when crops begin growing, Colton doesn’t have to release as much water from the reservoirs for irrigation, allowing more melting snow to stay in the reservoir.