Water supply okay according to new report

February 17th, 2006

KONP News

(Port Angeles) -- Not suprisingly, a wet January means a forecast of plenty of water this year.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service says area watersheds have caught up for the water year that began last October. They're forecasting streamflow for both the Dungeness and Elwha rivers at a little over 100 percent of normal this summer.

January precipitation was 200 percent of average and has accumulated on the north Olympic Peninsula at 120 percent of average for the water year.

But the snowpack at Hurricane Ridge through January was only 70 percent what is should be, but on the east side of the Olympics, snowpacks were about 25 percent higher than normal.

The snowpack numbers don't take into account a number of large snow storms in the mountains in early February.