Early Melt Hurts Snowpack

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The winter snowpack has melted off up to six weeks early in parts of Wyoming.

As of April 1, the state’s mountain snowpack was 70 to 75 percent of average, and its water equivalent was 67 percent of median.

The snowpack is greatest in the Upper Green River Basin of southwest Wyoming, but in the Belle Fourche and Cheyenne river basins in northeast Wyoming, the snow is virtually gone.

March saw little snowfall, and the numbers continue to point to a below-normal spring runoff from the mountain snowpack in nearly all the major river basins in the state.

Lee Hackleman of the Natural Resources Conservation Service says the good news is that Wyoming’s reservoirs are 120 percent of normal because of last year’s good runoff and precipitation.