Spring 2019 Water Report

A look at our current conditions, April 23, 2019

Our winter took its time getting started this past season with minimal snow in November, December and January. Local ski areas had just enough snow to work with to keep our holiday visitors happy and it seemed just as it was beginning to look bad we would get a few inches or so to cover the trails in a soft new coat. That all changed late in January, just as our guides Josh Gallivan and Scott Smith took a group of hardy winter anglers to Abaco Lodge in the Bahamas. The Pacific storms lined up and pounded the west coast and the Rockies for the next several weeks. In all about a dozen strong winter storms came into the Jackson Hole area dropping over 200″ of snow in February alone and much of that was all the way to the valley floor!

Here we are now in the last week or so of April and a good time to make some reasonable calls on our summer water predictions. Currently our valley snow has all but disappeared in the last couple weeks and the grass is greening and some flowers are emerging. Mountain snowpack is currently 116% of water equivalency, nearly a perfect number to be sitting on late in April.

If the averages prevail we are fine and will have great water conditions for most of the summer months. Only two scenarios could really hurt this ideal situation, 1) May is very wet and/or cool. This would build our pack and put runoff behind, then June and July are a mess with floods and delayed clearing during our busy season. 2) May is very warm and dry. This would quickly melt out all our snowpack and dry up the valley growth too early, increasing fire hazards later.

As with every year only nature knows what will occur… the good news is we have some tremendous mountains above with a breathtaking blanket of snow and wild, native trout, happy in the river below.

Check in regularly for updates! Thanks for reading– Scott Smith