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63 °F Forecast | Road Cams Sunday, September 12, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Prime Times Wellness Connection Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Rogue Valley's Finest EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People MARKETPLACE Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Classifieds Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend May 1, 2004 Applegate Lake, shown here, and Lost Creek Lake will be filled a month ahead of this year�s schedule to keep up with unseasonably hot weather. Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli Snow melt forces action By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Lost Creek and Applegate reservoirs will fill this weekend after a dwindling snowpack led federal water managers to abandon plans for topping off the two reservoirs next month. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers now is back to its normal schedule for filling its two main Jackson County reservoirs on May 1 each year. Corps hydrologists had planned on their so-called "slower-fill" plan since early March, when the Rogue and Umpqua basin snowpack was 150 percent of average, said Jim Buck, the Corps’ Lost Creek and Applegate project manager. Filling the reservoirs later than normal would have allowed the dams to pass less water into the Rogue and Applegate rivers this spring. It also would have created extra storage capacity should a heavy rain on the snowpack trigger a rare spring flood. But a hot and dry spring pounded the snowpack, which measured just 94 percent of average Friday for the two basins, Buck said. Advertisement "So now, the word is we’ll fill this weekend," Buck said. Both reservoirs were less than a foot in elevation from full Friday. Hydrologists will start "feathering" water releases upward beginning this weekend until the out-flows match in-flows, Buck said. The extra water will amount to about one-third more water released from Lost Creek and about 45 percent more water released from Applegate. However, Buck said flows will rise and dip based on changes for water flowing into the reservoirs. The change comes as good news to the upper Rogue’s spring chinook salmon anglers and the multi-million dollar industry catering to anglers stalking these large salmon prized for their edibility. Russ Stauff, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Rogue Watershed manager, said the spike in flows will draw more spring chinook upstream toward the upper Rogue, where anglers target them intensely. The higher flows will also cool the river downstream in the Gold Beach area, where the peak migration of spring chinook from the ocean typically occurs during the first half of May, Stauff said. "With the water temperature and flow, you should see some pretty nice, good-looking fish moving faster to the upper Rogue," Stauff said. Despite the recent drop in Southern Oregon’s snowpack, the region remained the wettest in Oregon. The next-wettest basin in Oregon on Friday was the Klamath, which sports a snowpack that contained 85 percent of normal water content, according to the National Resources Conservation Service. The Deschutes and Crooked basins were close at 84 percent. The driest areas in Oregon are on the coast and northeastern part of the state. The coast range, where the snowpack is always the lightest, was at just 5 percent of average, according to the conservation service. In northeast Oregon, the John Day basin had a snowpack of just 36 percent of average, according to the NRCS. The Owyhee basin was at 39 percent of average. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback ADVERTISERS A D V E R T I S E R S SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Opportunities