Hydro system and fish managers are praying for rain and snow after hearing the season's initial monthly "early bird" forecast, which predicts that the water supply gushing from mountain snowpacks this spring and summer will be much less than the historic average across the Columbia-Snake river basin.

The Dec. 31 forecast from the Northwest River Forecast Center "is, generally speaking, below normal across the board," Steve Barton of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told other members of the Technical Management Team Wednesday.

The Corps and Bureau of Reclamation operate the dams in the Federal Columbia River Power System to produce power, facilitate navigation and irrigation and make sure fish can get up and down the rivers in as good condition as possible. Those fish operations include such things as spilling water to provide fish passage and augmenting flows by releasing water from reservoirs during key periods of fish migration.

The TMT's federal, state and tribal members meet to discuss how the federal hydro system might be tailored, sometimes day-to-day, to improve conditions for salmon and steelhead stocks that migrate through the system. A total of 13 of those stocks are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

A below-normal water supply likely would make hydro operational decisions tougher because of the many demands on the system.

The National Weather Service's NWRFC said in its early bird forecast that the most likely scenario would be that 89.3 million acre feet of water will flow past The Dalles Dam on the lower Columbia between January and July. All of the water from the Snake River basin and the upper Columbia funnels through The Dalles on its way toward the Pacific Ocean.

That would be 83 percent of the average annual flow for the period 1971 through 2000 and the 12th lowest volume in the past 50 years.

The Dec. 31 forecast was produced using observed precipitation totals through the Dec. 28 and assuming future precipitation will be normal. The early bird is the first of three forecasts produced each month during the winter and spring by the NWRFC.

A more complex analysis will be undertaken to produce a "final" monthly forecast that is due today (Jan. 8).

The strength of the early season snowpack is in the north in the upper Columbia in British Columbia and western Montana where the snow-water equivalent to-date is generally in the 80s and 90s as a percent of average with a handful of readings above normal. The early bird predicts runoff past Grand Coulee Dam in central Washington at 89 percent of normal (56.1 MAF). Grand Coulee passes water from that upper Columbia region.

"In the mountains of central Idaho it becomes bleaker," Barton said of the snowpack building in the upper Snake River region so far this winter. The early bird forecast predicts runoff this year past Lower Granite Dam on the lower Snake will be 76 percent of average (22.7 MAF).

The forecasted flows into the reservoir behind west central Idaho's Dworshak Dam – a key provider of cool flow augmentation in summer for fish – are 84 percent of average this year, according to the early bird. The dam is on the North Fork of the Clearwater River.

A forecast being produced by the Corps, which operates the dam, is likely to be lower, in the low 60s, the Corps' Steve Hall told TMT.

"Things aren't looking very good for Dworshak," Hall said.

Prospects are better for another important storage reservoir, Lake Koocanusa above Libby Dam in northwest Montana. The early bird forecasts inflows there at 88 percent of average.

Lower than normal wintertime precipitation in the Northwest was predicted this year, largely because of abnormally high sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific – a sign that "El Nino" conditions will hold sway. The El Nino/Southern Oscillation is a climatic condition that can develop in two forms -- warm phase (El Nino) and a cold phase (La Nina). Each generally lasts from 6 to 18 months.

El Nino conditions can affect weather around the globe and generally tip the odds toward drier winters in the Pacific Northwest. In that condition, high pressure ridges build offshore to shunt storms to the north and south of the region.

The latest three-month precipitation forecast from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center says that there is a greater than 40 percent chance of below normal precipitation in northern Idaho, and north-central and northeastern Washington; a greater than 33 percent chance of the same in central Idaho, the Olympic Peninsula and southern portions of Washington, and northern Oregon; and an equal chance of below normal, normal, or above normal precipitation in the southern latitudes of Oregon and Idaho.

Positive (higher than normal) sea surface temperature anomalies have persisted in the equatorial east-central Pacific since June and, "based on current observations and dynamical model forecasts, El Niño is expected to last at least into the Northern Hemisphere spring 2010," according to a Monday CPC update.

Kyle Dittmer of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission told TMT participants that the most recent days' data shows those elevated SSTs may be "weakening ever so slightly." But a gradual weakening from peak El Nino conditions observed recently gradual change in clmatic conditions.

"If we're looking for a water miracle, we're not seeing it," Dittmer said of a sudden disappearance of El Nino. He did hold out hope that the El Nino conditions would disintegrate more quickly than is now estimated and possibly open the door to springtime snow storms at high elevations.

Water supply forecasters always issue early season predictions with numerous caveats. Typically only a small percentage of the season's snowpack is accumulated by Jan. 1 so on-the-ground conditions could change drastically if storm systems buck the El Nino odds and continue to bore through the Northwest in January, February and March.

November precipitation was 64 percent of normal in the area of the Columbia River basin above Grand Coulee Dam, 49 percent of normal in the Snake River basin above Ice Harbor Dam and 65 percent of normal above The Dalles, and from Dec. 1 through Dec. 28, all of the 26 subbasins or groups of subbasins evaluated by the NWRFC had below average precipitation. The east slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Washington experienced only 39 percent of its average precipitation in December, which normally is one of the year's wettest months.

A storm or two this early in the season can change snowpack snow-water equivalent percentages drastically.

As an example, a relatively weepy early January changed the percent in Montana mountains that feed the Kootenai River from 78 percent of average on Dec. 29 to 86 percent of average on Jan. 6. Montana's Flathead River drainage had its snow-water equivalent jump from 82 percent to 94 percent during that eight-day period.

And the year's first storms touched all parts of the Columbia basin. Central Oregon's Deschutes, Crooked, John Day river percentages climbed from 69 percent to 79 percent of normal snow-water equivalent, northeast Oregon's Grande Ronde from 76 to 89 percent, southwest Idaho's Weiser, Payette and Boise river snow-water equivalents from 63 percent of normal to 76 percent and central Washington's Yakima, Ahtanum drainages from 79 to 87 percent and Chelan, Entiat and Wenatchee drainages from 77 percent to 88 percent.