The last two months have been extraordinarily dry east of the Cascades crest, even for the sage brush laden, semi-arid zone extending into the Columbia Basin. To explore this, lets start with the precipitation during the past 60 days (see image below). Some locations on the eastern slopes have gotten less than .1 inches during the period.
The percentage of normal precipitation shows a similar story: many folks on the east side had less than 25% of normal. You can see that much of the rest of the state was fairly dry...but not
that dry.
Let's plot the precipitation at Yakima for the past twelve weeks. Essentially nothing since early January.
Pasco was a bit wetter, but not by much.
So, how serious is this "drought?" The answer has a lot of economic implications for eastern Washington crops, particularly the dry land farmers of the Palouse. Last year they made out like bandits, as drought in the Midwest and Plains caused crop prices to skyrocket, while eastern Washington farmers had excellent crops.
The National Weather Service has a "drought monitor" website that summarizes the sub-surface water situation (see graphic). No drought in eastern Washington (white color), while much of the southwest and Plains States were dry. It turns out that although the past two months have been dry in eastern Washington, the last year has been near normal.
To illustrate this fact, here is the observed and normal precipitation at Pasco.
Basically, a wet fall balanced out a dry winter.
Pretty much the same story at Yakima:
Snow over the Great Plains has put a small dent in the severe drought in the nation's midsection, but at this point I suspect that eastern Washington farmers will again have a highly profitable year as their fellows over the Great Plains and Midwest suffer from the effects of drought. At least that is what the National Weather Service is predicting:
Reminder; the NW Weather Workshop, which is open to all, starts on Friday. To see the agenda and to register go to http://www.atmos.washington.edu/pnww
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