Good Morning,
The cold that was coming still is, just not as cold and for not as long, rendering the event a non-event:
Portland is chilly but just slightly below normal:
Still, this will be the biggest load event to hit Mid-C since last month but the hub is well prepared for winter loads, the reservoirs (Coulee at least) have been recharged, the mountains are full of snow.
Note the increase in off-peak flows at Coulee, a reflection of the new winter load shapes. We expect the reservoir to be further drafted to meet loads over the next couple of weeks and, with no major precip in the works, today may mark the high-water mark for WY2016, and it’s a pretty high mark:
Those are big numbers for the NWRFC to be posting this early in the water year, evidence of solid snow builds. Clearly this is not your father’s El Nino, at least for the northwest. Where is the dry?
Well, it is dryer in the northern basins than the southern. Contrast the Salmon to the Kootenai: 154% versus 90%, that is El Nino-esque. Back to the high water mark, with 10 days of dry this most recent forecast could well be the top but the trend has not been the bull’s friend. El Nino is real and real big (2.9 vs 2.7 in 1997) but the storm track has been pointing a bit more north than 1997. A few more storms like earlier this month and the Mid-C will end up with an above normal water year, which may prove problematic for the Corps’s flood control plans.
The most recent SOR contained an interesting insight into the Corps thinking with respect to flood control and “may result in some relaxation of the draft”. The concern is that the northwest will be dry, at least the latter half of winter, and the flood control rule curves should be ignored or at least modified. That is fine as long as El Nino behaves the way it did in the past but that is a bold assumption. What if climate change has pivoted the fire hose to point a bit further north? Then the northwest gets the California precip and ends up with a 1999 type water year without a 1999 flood control draft. Big water and no draft almost assures flooding issues at some point in the runoff calendar but it’s still too early to worry about those considerations but not too early to monitor.
Today is STP Monday and we don’t know what to expect. Will they reverse the Tuesday revision or will the RFC stick by their forecast until they don’t? Given the plethora of water and snow everywhere I cannot accept their Jan-Mar forecasts and don’t, we use our internal projections in our price forecasts. Offsetting that bearish sentiment is the reality of ten relatively dry days. We’ll have all those questions answered by day’s end and am confident we’ll also have several new ones to ponder.
Cheers,
Mike