View full sizeWhere's the snow? Lower-than-normal snowpack levels have skiers and snowboarders griping, but officials say there's plenty of time for flurries to fall. Earlier this month, grass could be seen poking out of the snow at the Timberline Ski Area.Snow has been slow to fall in Oregon this year, and official snowpack readings Thursday validated the gripes of skies and snowboarders.
Jon Lea, a hydrologist with the
in Portland, made a morning trek to a Mount Hood Sno-Tel site below Timberline Lodge to measure the snowpack. It read at half of normal levels for this time of year.
The snow was about 41 inches deep, about 54 percent of average. About 91 inches of snow were measured at the same spot last year, Lea said.
"Last year we had a very, very snowy December," he said. "We started off really good this year and then we had this very, very dry December come along."
The dry spell affected snow levels across the state: Oregon is at 43 percent of its average snowfall.
Washington has had better luck. Though eastern parts of the state are drier than the North Cascades and Puget Sound, overall Washington is at 81 percent of its average snowfall.
A significant portion of the western United States' water supply for drinking, farming, recreation and other uses comes from melting snow in the summer. However, Lea said the season's low numbers aren't anything to worry about yet.
Typically about 40 percent of the maximum snowpack comes by Jan. 1, he said, meaning there's plenty of time for the flakes to fall.
"We have a long ways of winter left to go," he said.
In fact, the National Weather Service has forecast 12 to 18 inches of snow for Friday in the northern Oregon Cascades, with another 4 to 8 inches Friday night.
"As we were finishing up at the site, it started to snow, so the storm that was predicted to come did," Lea said. "It's exactly what we need to get the snowpack to build back up."
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