RIVERDALE — It was a lot of snow, but it won’t make much of a difference for water levels in Lake Sakakawea. That’s the summary from the latest snowmelt runoff outlook issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The April blizzards and accompanying dumps of snow that impacted much of North Dakota also resulted in increased snowpack in the mountains above the Missouri and Yellowstone River drainages that feed into Lake Sakakawea. However, as big as the snowfall seemed, it apparently won’t have much of an impact on North Dakota’s largest body of water.
The May runoff outlook issued by the Corps calls for 17.8-million-acre feet of runoff in the Missouri River basin, the same amount as was forecast April 1, yet the water level in Lake Sakakawea is expected to increase slightly from earlier forecasts. For example, the April 1 outlook called for Sakakawea to be at 1827.9 feet at the end of May. The May 1 outlook contains a half-foot increase to 1,828.4 feet.
Sakakawea is now forecast to peak at 1831.3 feet at the end of July, 1.7 feet above previous outlooks but nowhere near the major rise that some may have anticipated due to late season snows.
Also, the amount of water being released through Garrison Dam is expected to surpass inflow by the middle of May when releases are scheduled to be 18,500 cubic feet per second daily.
