The Wallowa Mountains stand covered in snow in October 2021. A faster than normal snowmelt in early 2022 has dramatically lowered the snow equivalent levels in Eastern Oregon, signaling increased water scarcity for the late-spring and summer months.

LA GRANDE — Eastern Oregon’s snowpack is melting faster than expected, worsening an ongoing drought and pointing to a very dry year if conditions continue.

Scott Oviatt, a hydrologist and snow survey supervisor for the Natural Resources Conservation Service Oregon, a member of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said snow started melting almost two weeks earlier than usual, and many sites across the state hadn’t even reached their peak available snowpack levels before melt off began in the lower elevations.

“Once the snowpack starts melting out, it’s hard to stop,” he said.

The information comes weeks after many Eastern Oregon snowpack levels were reported to be in good shape. The dramatic decline in snowpack levels coupled with the ongoing drought has caused concern among experts who are watching the snow water equivalent levels closely.

“The fact that we didn’t reach a peak value and the fact that we’re melting out early is a concern because we are losing the available water content in the snow pack (earlier) than we normally plan on,” Oviatt said. “Depending on location and elevation, we’re about two or three weeks early, and we didn’t achieve our peak, and now we’re at 70% for the Grande Ronde/Powder area and we’re dropping rapidly.”

Those who rely on water irrigation channels should be especially concerned about the rapidly melting snow. While snowmelt is generally expected to hit its zero point sometime in mid to late spring, having the water runoff begin and end earlier means that resources will become scarce as summer drags on — and a heat wave event can further impact water supplies and leave farmers and agricultural industries dry.

Last year’s heat wave depleted water supplies and caused some farms in Oregon to run out of water entirely by late June 2021, weeks ahead of schedule. In one instance, Plantworks, a nursery in Cove, had to purchase new water storage containers and fill them with city water in order to keep their crops alive.

“Essentially, folks that rely on irrigation water will have less available, and there will probably be some restrictions applied depending upon where they get their water and their water rights,” Oviatt said. “There will be less available surface water for instream flows to support things. There will be less available groundwater storage because we’re not recharging our system with our ground soil moisture and because we’ve been in a long-term drought and we didn’t really recover from that over this winter.”

Union County watermaster Shad Hattan agrees, stating that if the area doesn’t get significant spring rain, “it will be hard on everything. Agriculture, stream flows. If we don’t get moisture for April and May, that’s (going to be) hard on everybody.”

One silver lining to the early melt off and continuation of the drought? Fire season might be milder compared to last year.

“The biggest thing is how fast the snow we have right now comes off,” said Trevor Lewis, assistant fire management officer with the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. “If we lose our snow real quick, and it dries out fairly quickly then our grass growth isn’t as high, so we generally see lower rates of spread with our fires, even if we do have significant fuel moistures that are dryer. It really depends on how this snow comes off.”

Lewis said that last year’s slow runoff allowed for above average grass and brush growth — primary fuels for wildfires that were primed by the heat wave that pushed temperatures to record highs in most of Oregon. That grass growth meant that fires spread more rapidly, and in the case of the Bootleg Fire resulted in one of the nation’s largest wildfires for 2021.

“It’s kind of a catch-22 for us,” Lewis said. “Does it come quickly and we have a drought? Or does it come off slow and we end up getting the grass growth?”

Despite being a La Nina year, the Eastern Oregon snowpack wasn’t enough to start turning around the drought conditions in the area. As of March 31, most of Eastern Oregon remains in severe or moderate drought, and conditions are expected to worsen over the summer.

“In order to recover from that long-term drought we need successive years and we need excessive amounts of precipitation, and we’re just not getting it,” Oviatt said. “It’s not going to happen this year, we’re going to have to make some sacrifices in terms of surface water and available water.”