HELENA - One of the worst droughts of the last century seems to be loosening its grip on Montana, statistics show, and the drought declaration covering much of the state could be lifted as early as Thursday.
"The whole state is no longer in a drought," said Rick Bondy, division engineer for the Water Resources Division of the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. "There are still some places we're worried about. It's still a close call everywhere. Just a little bit of dry weather would put us right back there."
Most places are now showing precipitation levels between 85 to 115 percent of normal, with a few soggy spots running up to 150 to 200 percent of normal, statistics from the National Weather Service show. Dry conditions persist, however, in a few parched places like Glasgow, Butte and the northwest corner of the state.
The official state of the drought is the subject of a Montana Drought Advisory Committee meeting scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Thursday at the Department of Environmental Quality in Helena. Bondy said he would recommend the committee lift the drought declaration in at least some wet counties.
Drought is declared county by county.
Drought is not an easy thing to measure, Bondy said. One normal year of precipitation will not necessarily repair the damage done by the drought, especially because parts of Montana have been so dry for so long.
"It will take a couple of normal and above normal years to eventually fill up the aquifers and the subsoil," Bondy said.
Mild droughts are nothing unusual in Montana, said Gene Petrescu, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Missoula, but the drought that has gripped Montana recently has been the worst in the last 100 years in some places and one of the worst in the last century overall.
Southwestern Montana around Dillon - which was hardest hit in the drought - has experienced its worse drought since weather data was collected, Petrescu said. The Billings area has also experienced the driest four or five years of the last century.
Overall, he said, the worst drought in state history was between 1934-1937, with the current drought among the top three.
The term "normal" precipitation is misleading, he said. Generally, most years are below normal, with a few very wet years bringing up the average.
Montana's drought has defied a national trend of ever wetter years, he said.
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