Poor snowpack could shrink NW hydropower

By Ted Sickinger
The Oregonian

A thin snowpack and predictions of low runoff this summer have the Bonneville Power Administration forecasting a financial loss for the year, and Northwest water watchers hoping for more snowy weather before the winter’s through.
 
In a forecast issued Friday, the National Weather Service’s Northwest River Forecast Center predicted that water flows past The Dalles Dam will be 79.2 million acre feet between January and July. That would be 74 percent of the 30-year average for the period — 107.3 million acre feet — and the eighth lowest flow in the past 40 years.
 
Anxiety levels remain fairly low. February and March can still be big snow months in the Columbia River Basin, filling the region’s virtual reservoir. But the numbers have gotten progressively worse since the early bird forecast in December. As winter pushes on and the big snows fail to fly, the predictions begin to harden into reality. Read more