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Some of the snow's gone, but there's still a lot left By BILL KETTLER Mail Tribune "Yuck" was the way Edna Sinclair described the soggy scene at Lake of the Woods Monday. "The snow's been melting for three days," said Sinclair, who works at Lake of the Woods Resort. "It's way down compared to what we had. There's still enough for snowmobiles. It's crusty on top. Quite a bit of it will hold you up." Monday night's rain capped a week of unseasonably warm weather that brought rain to most of Southern Oregon's winter recreation areas. The rain melted a chunk of the region's deep early-season snowpack, but there's still plenty of water in the snow that remains. For the Rogue and Umpqua watersheds as a whole, the water content of mountain snows stood at 144 percent of normal Monday. Data from the Natural Resource Conservation Service showed total precipitation since Oct. 1 stood at 114 percent of average. Deep snow in the mountains absorbed much of the rain, but the snow compacted as it absorbed the rain, said Roger Gerig of the National Weather Service's Medford station. At Howard Prairie Lake, for example, there was 23 inches of snow on the ground Monday, compared to 29 inches on New Year's Day. A mix of rain and heavy wet snow fell at Crater Lake National Park, compressing the snow depth 6 inches, but the 91 inches on the ground exceeds the average depth for early January by 20 inches, said dispatcher Pam Edwards. "The temperature's been hanging between 32 and 35," Edwards said. Gerig said a few showers could persist today, and the snow level could drop briefly to 5,000 feet before the storm moves east. "We'll get a little dusting of snow," he said, "and then it looks like we're going to clear up." Rain seems unlikely to return before the weekend, Gerig said. The warm rain raised stream flows in the Rogue River above Lost Creek Lake, but the Army Corps of Engineers held back much of the water to bring the stored water level closer to normal for early January. The river flowed at 3,200 cubic feet per second into the reservoir, but the Corps released just 700 cfs at the dam, said Jim Buck, operations manager for the Rogue Basin project. The lake fell far below its average summer level during last year's drought. Collecting runoff now helps the Corps meet its goal of filling the reservoir by May 1. Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.