Region mostly listed with no drought

Editor’s note: See a related story in the Farm and Ranch special section in today’s edition.

A winter with plenty of snow — enough to cause a different problem with flooding — and ample spring rains has changed the listing for this region on the Montana map of the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The maps released the last two Thursdays have shown no drought conditions in Blaine, Chouteau or Hill county, with dry conditions to the west just pushing into Liberty County.

The western edge of Liberty County is listed as “Abnormally Dry” on the drought map released last Thursday, with “Moderate Drought” conditions in Teton County just pushing across the western border into Liberty County.

This is the first time in three years the map has not listed at least abnormally dry conditions in at least one of those three counties.

Drought conditions around the state generally have improved with significant snowfall during the winter and decent rains falling in recent months.

As of Tuesday, National Weather Service listed Havre at 6.99 inches of precipitation since Jan. 1, just more than the normal value for July 5 of 6.94 inches.

But for the water year, measured from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, Havre had 10.53 inches, almost 2 inches more than the normal 8.58 inches.

And for snow, while the region did not come close to the near-record year five years ago in the winter of 2017-18, from July 1, 2022, Havre had received 65.9 inches, with the normal value from July 1 to June 30 41 inches. Havre received almost half of this year’s snowfall in December.

That follows several years of moisture deficits in this region, with Havre still listed as being short more than 8 inches of normal accumulation from June 1, 2020 through June 14, the latest data available for this article.

But that is a major improvement, with the five-year rolling deficit growing to more than 11 inches at some points in the last year.

Years of drought

While the areas of drought have shifted across the state over recent years — One year ago, northwest Montana, much of which now is listed as sever to moderate drought, with the patch spilling as far east as Liberty County, was listed as having no drought — dry to drought conditions have been listed in Blaine, Chouteau, Hill and Liberty counties since May 2020 on the Drought Monitor.

The monitor, available online at https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu , has been jointy produced since 1999 by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meteorologists and climatologists from the NDMC, NOAA and USDA take turns as the lead author of the map, usually two weeks a time, the Drought Monitor website says.

The site details how the teams decide what listings to give areas around the country.

“When you think about drought, you probably think about water — or the lack of it,” the site says. “Precipitation plays a major role in the creation of the Drought Monitor, but the map’s authors consider many data sources. Some of the numeric inputs include precipitation, streamflow, reservoir levels, temperature and evaporative demand, soil moisture and vegetation health.

“No single piece of evidence tells the full story, and neither do strictly physical indicators,” the entry on the site adds. “That’s why the USDM isn’t a statistical model; it’s a blend of these physical indicators with drought impacts, field observations and local insight from a network of more than 450 experts. Using many different types of data and reconciling them with expert interpretation is what makes the USDM unique. We call it a convergence of evidence approach.”

And the the impact in this region of the shortfall in precipitation and its the factors like streamflow, reservoir levels, soil moisture and vegetative health has showed up on the monitor.

Abnormally dry conditions were listed here in May 2020, after more than a year of the region being listed as having no drought conditions.

The entire state was listed as having no drought conditions from the end of October 2019 to the first week of December of that year, after which dry conditions pushed into western Montana.

But once the dry conditions were reported in this region May 19, 2020, they persisted until this month.

By Sept. 1, 2020, a patch of D1 “Moderate Drought” was listed in Hill, Blaine and northeastern Chouteau counties, and by April 20, 2021, Blaine County was shown with D2 “Severe Drought.”

July 13, 2021, D3 “Extreme Drought had pushed from the east into Blaine County, and by Nov. 16, 2021, D4 “Exceptional Drought,” the most severe listing, was shown in parts of Chouteau, Hill and Blaine counties.

One or more counties were listed as having Extreme Drought through most of the period through March 14 of this year, with the ratings gradually improving until last week’s update showed no drought conditions in the region except for the western edge of Liberty County.

A wet year hits

2022 was looking dry for most of the year, but that changed in December, which saw what was likely record snowfall for Hare with 32.7 inches recorded. The normal value is 8.2 inches for Havre in December.

The snowfall dropped off a bit for January, with Havre recording 5.8 inches with the normal value 9 inches, but it came back for February with 7.1 inches, just greater than the normal value of 6.9 inches.

In March, Havre saw some 11 inches of snow, with a little more than 5 inches normal.

By March 27, For the snow year, starting July 1, Havre this year had received 63.6 inches of snow. The normal value for March 27 is 37.3 inches.

April started off chilly, then warmed rapidly, leading to another problem — flooding. As the snow melted, it had no place to go, leading to flooded fields and roads, some of which are still closed as planning and work on a federal disaster declaration is ongoing. Local governments already declared disasters due to the flooding, and Gov. Greg Gianforte in May declared disasters including for Hill, Liberty and Blaine counties and Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

Rain has continued to fall in the area for the last couple of months, leading to the totals listed at the start of this article, although no more major flooding has been reported.

What may be coming

The seasonal outlook provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes National Weather Service, shows basically an equal chance for above-normal and below-normal precipitation for this region through September, although a slight chance of warmer weather is expected on the western edge.

With an El Niño developing, the seasonal forecaster at NOAA’s online climate prediction center at https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov shows a chance of this region have above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation by November or December.

An El Niño develops when temperatures at the equatorial Pacific are above normal, which typically leads to a greater chance of warmer, dryer winter months in Montana.

The world is just coming out of an unusual three-year La Niña, when the equatorial Pacific sees cooler average temperatures. That typically leads to cooler, wetter winters in Montana.

But the El Niño does not guarantee that weather will be warmer and dryer, and does not stop the area from having cold days and wet days, but it is likely to be warmer and dryer.

The Seasonal Drought Outlook map at the climate prediction center for June through September shows drought likely to persist in the northwest part of the state but does not show drought likely to return to this region by September.