BAKER CITY, Ore. — Northeastern Oregon’s mountain snowpack, a key source of water for irrigation, is starting to pile up earlier than usual.

It’s a promising start to the snowpack season for a region that’s in moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

As of Nov. 5, the water content in the snow at a network of more than 20 automated measuring sites was well above average.

For the Grande Ronde, Burnt, Powder and Imnaha basins, which include much of Baker, Union and Wallowa counties, the snowpack was more than five times the average for the date.

In the northern Blue Mountains, which includes the Umatilla and Walla Walla river basins, the figure was about 10 times the average.

Snow amounts are modest — less than a foot, generally — but in many years there is little or snow accumulation even at the higher elevations in the first week of November.

A station near Anthony Lake, in the Elkhorn Mountains northwest of Baker City, the snow depth was 12 inches on Tuesday morning.

That station does not measure water content, a statistic based on the weight of the snow. Snow depth is a less meaningful measure because a foot of powdery snow can contain less water than six inches of soggy snow.

Some stations that do calculate water content are showing amounts that have been exceeded, on this date, in just a few years over the past four decades or so.

At Eilertson Meadow, for instance, along Rock Creek in the Elkhorns west of Haines, the water content Tuesday morning was 1 inch. The measuring station, which was installed in 1980, has recorded a higher water content on Nov. 5 in just three years — 2022 (1.3 inches), 2013 (1.1) and 1991 (1.2).

A station near Bourne, north of Sumpter, had a water content of 1.1 inches Tuesday morning. Since it was built in 1978, the station has measured more water content in just two years — 2022 (1.6) and 1991 (1.2).