Snowpack Update - March, 2025
Hello from West Yellowstone. We're back with a snowpack update for March from our resident expert in all things water, Matt Klara. After a welcomed dose of spring conditions it's currently back to snowing hard in the high country with up to 4" of SWE possible and hurricane forced winds this weekend. Read on as Matt breaks down the impacts to our watersheds.
Our two least favorite words to describe a winter weather pattern are “warm” and “dry” but that is more or less what we’ve had a fair bit of lately until just a couple days ago. At lower elevations, the snow that was carpeting the lower valleys for a while this winter has steadily dwindled. Where I live, in Helena (Elev. 3900ft), it’s been downright balmy for a while and there is plenty of grass snowing. In West Yellowstone (Elev. 6666ft) winter persists, and snow piles abound, but the streets have melted off. There are, without a doubt, signs of spring floating around.
Interestingly and fortunately, despite the low elevation warmup. The mountains have continued to accumulate snowpack, including a really impressive blast of moisture this past weekend. The Madison, which was at 91% at the time of our last report, is now sitting at 97%. Remember, this is based on the Snotel sites up high, not on visual estimates of snow coverage on the valley floor! Likewise, the Gallatin has bumped up from 101% to 105%, the Upper Yellowstone rose from 91 to 99%, and the Henrys Fork/Teton has increased from 92% to 98% of average. Awesome!
NOAA’s March precipitation forecast isn’t looking quite as exciting as January’s or February’s. That said, their models have us at a 33-40% chance of above average precipitation for the next little while and the last storm we had and those anticipated in the coming week are definitely promising.
A deeper dive into the Madison data shows clearly what we are seeing across most of our angling area. Slow snowpack growth since we got hit hard with storms in early February and snowpack numbers still below average but above what we saw last winter. Our typical median peak snowpack in the Madison (21.9 inches of water) occurs on April 22nd, which is still 5 weeks away. Currently the watershed is sitting at 16.6 inches of water. That said, it’s not unheard of for us to see 4 inches of water or more in the mountains from now until late April. We may not hit the ultimate goal of average or above average peak snowpack this winter, but hopefully we should be close.
For the next couple of weeks the extended forecast for West Yellowstone includes phrases like “a little snow” and “snow throughout the day” so we are hopeful that we can build snowpack and keep on skiing our awesome local trails for a good while still.
If you haven’t finished stocking those spring flyboxes yet, now is the time to get after it. It won’t be long, now.
Take Care,
Matt and the BSA Crew
