HOPE STRONG FOR LIGHT WILDFIRE SEASON

The seemingly long winter here in North Central Washington has forecasters looking ahead to the spring and summer seasons. According to the National Weather Service's website drought.gov, North Central Washington is reported to be dealing with abnormally dry conditions. But experts say despite that finding, several other factors point to conditions being better than reported. Jeremy Wolf with the National Weather Service says that while the snowpack in the Cascade Mountains are running 86%-90% of normal, further east in the Mission Ridge area the snowpack is coming at near to above normal. That measurement is in large part due to all of the precipitation that has fallen over the last three months across the region, and Wolf says the outlook going into spring calls for elevated odds of being cooler and wetter than normal. He says forecasters look beyond the snowpack levels in North Central Washington all the way up to the headwaters of the Columbia River in Canada for stream flow measurements and a look at what the water supply is looking like as we head into the summer right down into Wenatchee.