Our annual spring runoff has started. It was a snowy year in the high mountains of our watershed and warm weather has come.

The percentage is for this time of year - we have 331% of the normal snow water equivalent (if you melted down the snow) in our watershed basin. I can remember many years when it we felt lucky that it was 80 or 90%. If the weather gets too hot too fast, a faster snowmelt can threaten some low-lying areas along the river, but at my house, things are fine.



Although I wouldn't mention it to those people in the low-lying areas, I am pleased to see a high runoff that will test the post-2013 flood damaged banks and channels so people can see how much more work needs to be done, and where the river has healed itself.



Our river is controlled by a dam, and there is a tunnel that can carry some of the water over the mountain, bypassing us, but when the snowmelt gets so high the tunnel can't handle it all, it comes down the river. This is why you see the flat line at around 125 cubic feet per second (cfs), and then the line starts jiggling up and down as they try to keep as much of it running through the tunnel as possible because there are currently road/river construction projects in our river canyon.

Once the construction is over, we'll have more normal river flows. High flows are good because it flushes out diseases that affect the fish, so they stay healthier, and it moves sediment that would otherwise build up and cause problems over time.