Snowpack

OGDEN — Despite recent storms, the snowpack above the Wasatch Front is still well below average, meaning runoffs will also be low.

That does not mean there will be watering or irrigation restrictions this summer, however.

“We’ve talked a lot about it,” said Weber Basin Water Conservancy District Director Tage Flint. “It looks as if the runoff projections show we’re going to settle in about 70 percent of normal.”

The storms of the past week have lifted some of Idaho's snowpacks from well below average to within a storm or two of normal.

SALT LAKE CITY — A year ago, snow was falling in Utah at about twice the average rate and resorts were packed with crowds of tourists reveling in the white stuff.

Now the state’s snowpack is at about 50 percent of average, and one resort without snowmaking capability hasn’t even opened for the season.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Communities across Utah are preparing for floods as temperatures this week heat up into the 90s and mountain snowpack starts a rapid melt, but officials say previous fears of major damage will likely be avoided.

The National Weather Service has issued flood watches for most of central and northern Utah along stretches of Little Cottonwood Creek, Big Cottonwood Creek, and the Weber, Provo, Duchesne and Bear rivers. Several areas are already above flood stage.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. -- On a June day, Frank Gehrke and Vince White strapped on their cross-country skis and glided across the wintry landscape of Dana Meadows in Yosemite National Park. The surrounding peaks were wrapped in snow, the breeze crisp enough for a hat and gloves.

The men screwed together four sections of a hollow aluminum tube White had carried on his backpack. With a vigorous twisting of a handle attached to the cylinder, he drove it into the layers of snow. It didn't hit dirt for another 7 feet.

After pulling up the snow-filled tube, White weighed it to gauge the water content. The Dana Meadows snowpack had enough water to form a 3-foot-deep lake.

From the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades to the northern Rockies, much of the West's high country remains buried under a thick snowpack that is filling reservoirs and engaging dam operators in a nerve-racking balancing act as they watch for jumps in temperature that could turn all those scenic piles of white into raging floodwaters.

BILLINGS, Mont. — Emergency workers ferried supplies to more than 300 people cut off Friday by flooding that has overwhelmed Montana towns and caused an estimated $8.6 million in damages to date.

Heavy rain and the runoff from record mountain snowpacks have caused rivers over much of the West to spill from their banks. Montana has been hit particularly hard over the past few weeks, with hundreds of homes inundated and scores of roadways swamped.

BOULDER, Colo. -- Deep spring snowpack in parts of the West has given states in the Colorado River basin some relief from drought, but water officials said Thursday there's still work to do to keep water flowing from faucets in the future.

Before this year, there was a "serious possibility" that a shortage would be declared next year of water for California, Arizona and Nevada, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Mike Connor said. That has been deferred until at least 2015, he said.