We are far to early in the winter to make any predictions about what the water year will look like. I typically don’t start writing about it for a couple more months, but today COID sent out an “outlook” email from Kyle Gorman, our local region manager for the Oregon Water Resources Department, that contained an important reminder. By now we should all be familiar with the map on the left showing snow water equivalent for various basins as of today. Kyle points out that these percentages are misleading. The Deschutes Basin at 100% of average over the past 20 years is not as encouraging when you consider that the past 20 years has been a period of mostly drought. To get out of the drought we are still in we need a lot more snow for at least 3 more months and for a few years in a row.