Wet winter and spring bust Montana drought.
In July 2016, a dry spring and the early melt of a below-average snowpack in the months prior resulted in 10 Montana counties being in extreme drought.
In January it was a little better but not by much.
The same storms that slammed California would head northeast to Montana, but that’s not the whole story of our drought reduction.
Many storms coming from the Pacific this year were quite strong and packed a lot of moisture.
This led to one official from Big Sky Resort in an interview with The Weather Channel describing this year’s snowpack as "coastal snow".
It’s good for the health of the snowpack, and it’s a promising sign as we get ready to fill reservoirs across the state.
Moisture totals are well above average, some of the wettest years ever, for Kalispell and Missoula.
The wettest storms have had a tendency to track into northwestern rather than southwestern Montana all winter and spring.
Butte’s rainfall this month is actually a little bit less than on April 16 of 2016.The Hyalite drainage near Bozeman is already suffering from low snowpack.