Despite significant snow in parts of Washington, water supply shortages are projected in the Methow, Okanogan and Upper Yakima basins, prompting Gov. Jay Inslee to declare a drought emergency in those watersheds.
A new biological opinion for the federal Columbia River power system aimed at protecting and recovering salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act was completed Friday and posted without fanfare to the NOAA Fisheries website.
After a colder than average February and with snow piling up at low elevations in the Snake River basin, a sunny and warm early March is resulting in runoff from the basin that is sufficiently supplementing flows lower in the Columbia River that will keep water over several hundred chum redds (nests) downstream of Bonneville Dam.
Osoyoos Lake, which straddles Washington state and British Columbia, is set to rise a month earlier than normal and the Washington Department of Ecology wants residents to be aware.
A February wave of cold and snow, breaking records in some places, gave the water supply outlook a striking boost through much of the Columbia Basin, but all places were not equal.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this month will conduct routine annual inspections, preventative maintenance and repairs at all navigation locks on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
February has delivered a cold and snowy recovery to mountain snowpack and water supply outlooks in the Columbia Basin, with the exception of Oregon’s Cascade mountain range.
Some portions of the Columbia River basin saw significant rain and snow, along with cooler than normal weather, over the past week, but the change to a basin water supply forecast that is just a little more than a week old has been slight.
The experimental extreme draining of a reservoir in Oregon to aid downstream migration of juvenile chinook salmon is showing benefits but also a mix of unintended consequences, including changing the aquatic food web and releasing potential predators downstream.
Snowpack and streamflow forecasts are below average across most of the Columbia Basin, with those conditions being particularly pronounced in southern and southeastern Oregon, according to a Thursday water supply briefing from the Northwest River Forecast Center in Portland.
A flexible spill agreement signed in December by federal agencies, states and a tribe promises additional spring spill to total dissolved gas limits, known as gas caps, beginning this spring at Columbia and Snake river dams. The additional spill is thought to aid juvenile salmon passage.
Populations of coastal cutthroat trout and coastal giant salamanders in the Pacific Northwest show the ability to rebound quickly from drought conditions, new research by Oregon State University suggests.
A new study has found that changes in the atmospheric circulation since the 1980s have offset most of the impact of global warming on winter snowpack in the mountains of the western United States.
With precipitation and snowpack lagging to varying degrees in the Columbia Basin, the first water supply and streamflow forecasts for 2019 are reflecting those conditions.
Every day, between April 3 and June 20 last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to determine what amount of spill would bring the lower Snake and Columbia rivers up to state-mandated total dissolved gas limits while not exceeding those limits.
At one point last spring, the level of court-mandated spring spill designed to aid downstream passage of juvenile salmon stalled the passage of adult salmon at Little Goose Dam on the lower Snake River.
Tree rings tell the story of what’s happening physiologically as fire suppression makes forests more dense and less tolerant of drought, pests and wildfires, new research shows.
An agreement signed this week by federal agencies, states and a tribe promises additional spring spill next year at Columbia and Snake river dams to aid juvenile salmon passage, but how the spill is conducted will be by agreement among six parties and not by court order, as it was in spring 2018.
Warm and dry has been the story for the Pacific Northwest in recent weeks, contributing to a region-wide snowpack deficit that may continue for months to come, according to speakers participating in a drought and climate outlook teleconference this week.
Drought conditions are worsening throughout much of the Columbia Basin, and the trend could continue through the winter with an emerging El Nino weather pattern from the Pacific Ocean.
A future warmer world will almost certainly feature a decline in fresh water from the Sierra Nevada mountain snowpack. Now a new study by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that analyzed the headwater regions of California’s 10 major reservoirs, representing nearly half of the state’s surface storage, found they could see on average a 79 percent drop in peak snowpack water volume by 2100.
Forests in the Pacific Northwest will be less vulnerable to drought and fire over the next three decades than those in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, computer modeling by researchers in Oregon State University’s College of Forestry shows.
August delivered warmer and drier-than-average weather to Columbia Basin states and most of the West, and more of the same is forecast in October, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center recently reported.
A proposal to store Columbia River water in an off-channel reservoir at the McNary Dam pool is under consideration.
Rising water temperatures and poor passage are causing Oregon and Washington fishery managers to shut down fishing at the mouth of the Deschutes River in Oregon and the mouth of the Yakima River in Washington.
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