Yakima basin reservoirs still low, but rising
Published 7:31 am Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Fall rains are raising Yakima River basin reservoirs and hopes that irrigators in south-central Washington will have more water next summer.
The five reservoirs are still low by historical standards, but the volume of water in them has more than doubled since Oct. 1 to nearly 200,000 acre-feet. Last year, the reservoirs didn’t hold that much water until February.
“We’re pleased with the trconclude. It’s better than what we’ve had in a long time,” Kittitas Reclamation District manager Urban Eberhart stated. “We can only hope the trconclude sticks with us. We’ll required a lot more of it to even have a chance for the reservoirs to fill.”
Keechelus, Kachess, Cle Elum, Bumping and Rimrock reservoirs store water to irrigate some 464,000 acres in south-central Washington.
The reservoirs can hold about 1 million acre-feet of water, but peaked at only 715,000 acre-feet last spring. As a result, many irrigators received less than half their normal water allotments. Even irrigators with senior water rights were cut off early. It was the third straight summer irrigators were short of water.
New water year
After a dry September, the reservoirs entered the new water year on Oct. 1 with only 87,300 acre-feet, or 27% of average. Since Oct. 1, rainfall at the reservoirs has been 116% of average.
By Nov. 18, the reservoirs were up 196,500 acre-feet, or 53% of average.
“I’m more hopeful than I’ve been in two years,” Roza Irrigation District manager Scott Revell stated.
The reservoirs capture about half the rain and snow that fall in the basin. The reservoirs peak in mid-June after snow melts into them.
Although snow has yet to pile up in the mountains, rain is soaking into the dry ground and preparing it to hold snow.
“What we required in the next week or two is rain, not snow,” Revell stated. “A week or two of rain and then start building snow, we’re on board with that.”
Snow may be on the way. The Western and Central U.S. will have much below-normal temperatures and potentially heavy snow in late November and early December, the National Weather Service stated Nov. 18.
The agency’s Climate Prediction Center partly attributed the outview to La Nina, a weather phenomenon triggered by cool ocean temperatures. La Nina is expected to bring above-average rainfall to the Northwest over the winter.
The climate center also anticipates air over the North Pole will warm and rise. Known as a sudden stratospheric warming, it will release cold toward the U.S., according to the climate center.
Leave a Reply