March brings substantial snowpack
Though clouds obscured Mount Hood most of March, a view from a PDX-bound jet reveals their moisture has boosted the snowpack to above normal.
Friday, April 1, 2011
All that nasty March weather brought much-needed snow to the Cascades.
A steady influx of Pacific storms boosted the snowpack at Mount Hood to 112 percent of average as of the end of March, which is typically the peak of the winter snowpack.
That’s good news for the region as a whole, according to Jon Lea, hydrologist with the U.S. Natural Resource Conservation Service in Portland.
Snowpack throughout the Columbia River basin stood at 118 percent of average as of the first of April. Most of the water that drives hydroelectric turbines first clings to the mountains as snow.
A healthy snowpack means more water for irrigators growing crops, ocean-bound juvenile salmon and a surplus of electricity when it melts off during the late spring and summer.
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