Wasco County in moderate drought

That’s down from more than 17% of Oregon experiencing moderate to severe (D2) conditions in late January.

About 10,566 Wasco County residents are experiencing drought now.

This isn’t unusual for the past two decades, which have — on average — been drier than any other two decades for the past 1,000 years, despite a couple of wet seasons, according to Oregon.gov. The culprits are temperature and precipitation levels. Even a wet spring cannot always stave off a drought, if several previous years were dry enough to build up a severe moisture deficit.

For now, though, snowpack within the Hood-Sandy-Lower Deschutes basin is at 100% for the year, compared to the median value from 1991-2020. The John Day basin is at 117%, according to the Oregon Snow Survey, a service of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Snow-water equivalent (the amount of water on the landscape, stored as snow) measured anywhere from below to well above historical averages in February, depending on location.

Oregon streams east of the Cascades also vary from below-average flow, to well above average in February; west of the Cascades, most streams had above-average flows.

However, reservoir levels in the Deschutes basin measured below average in February.

Drought and snowpack conditions were still changing in January and February. An atmospheric river of storms slammed parts of the west coast in the week of Feb. 14-20, but dried out upon crossing the Cascades.

The United States has experienced increasing droughts since about 2014, as compared to the decade before, according to the same source. Since 2014, both severity of droughts, and the percent area of the U.S. experiencing drought, appear to have increased from the decade before.

For more information, or to make a citizen science report on drought conditions in your area, go to droughtmonitor.unl.edu.