“Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting,” a quote that is attributed to Mark Twain, is possibly apocryphal and is absolutely apropos. Whether your preferred drink is bourbon, IPA or ginger ale, your daily life is supported by a highly orchestrated and at times fragile balancing act between supply and demand for water. In the best-case scenario, this balancing act is a case of “no news is good news:” The taps keep flowing, irrigated crops keep growing and hydroelectric dam-powered lights keep glowing. At other times, equilibrium is lost and the news cycle fills with stories of floods or droughts. [Above photo: Natural springs from the Middle Fork of Tumalo Creek eventually flow through the Bend Municipal Watershed.]

Oregon’s Water Crisis: Navigating the Confounding 2025-2026 Winter Season

In the Pacific Northwest, the start of the 2025-2026 winter was a confounding one. Ample mid-October snowfall had skiers and snowboarders hanging their mountain bikes in their garages and scrambling to sharpen their edges and wax their bases. Early season hopes were quickly dashed, however, with a dry November followed by a damp but very warm December that kept the precipitation more wet than white. This resulted in record-high river levels paired with record-low snowpacks in many places. The seesaw behavior carried on into January. There was enough snowfall to get the chairlifts spinning at local ski resorts, but the high-pressure system and sunny skies that followed led to deflated announcements of paused operations.

From Cascades to Canals: A Primer on Central Oregon Hydrology

If you’ve climbed South Sister or another Cascade peak and had a good look around, you already know a few things about hydrology and water resources. From the Cascade crest, a look to the west plunges down into the McKenzie River and eventually the Willamette River watersheds. Dominated by Douglas fir, the western slopes of the Cascades see 80 to 100 inches of precipitation in most years.

To the east is the Deschutes River watershed, which is thirstier as it is located in an area with annual precipitation totals of only 10 to 20 inches per year, and its landscape is punctuated with ponderosa pines, their deep roots better suited to tap water deep below the surface. This west-to-east transition cleaves Oregon like an axe and is one of the most striking things about driving through the Columbia River Gorge between Hood River and The Dalles.

Snow and water resources in Oregon are really a story of where, when and how much. Regarding where: The west-to-east transition exemplified by precipitation and vegetation also exists in winter temperatures, with Bend and Burns far colder than Beaverton and Brownsville. All of these spatial patterns layer together to control where snow falls in the state. The Willamette Valley is plenty wet, but too warm for much snow. Eastern Oregon is plenty cold, but too dry (Wallowas excepted) to produce significant snow accumulations. This leaves the skinny Cascade crest as the sole purveyor of the meters-deep snowpacks for which the Pacific Northwest is known.

Why the Cascade Snowpack is Our Most Vital Water Reservoir

The when of water availability can be just as important as the how much when it comes to planning for water use later in the year. In western Oregon, where it is too warm for significant snowfall, the rise and fall of its rivers largely mirrors the seasonal patterns in rainfall. In the event that this timing is not convenient for users, including cities and farmers, it can be (and often is) changed through water infrastructure such as surface water reservoirs, groundwater recharge basins and distribution networks of canals and aqueducts. In colder areas that experience snowfall, there can be a several-month delay between when water falls from the sky and when it runs off in a river.

This delayed gratification is worth the wait, however, because the lag helps to reduce flooding, and keeps stream temperatures cool and aquatic species happy well into the summer. In effect, the snowpack is as much a reservoir as are Green Peter, Detroit and Lookout Point lakes. The snowpack “reservoir” has the added benefit of being distributed over the landscape and, as a result, it treads lightly. It requires no heavy construction or environmental impact statements, and it does not impede fish passage or hold back sediment.

With water and snow in such high demand, it makes sense to develop ways of keeping our eye on them. Water is the easier subject, by far. Reservoirs behind dams are just big buckets after all, and the volume of water they contain is simple to determine. Water in the ground may be out of sight, but by monitoring wells, scientists and water managers are able to estimate how much is down there. Water in rivers is accurately measured by a network of hundreds of gaging stations in Oregon. These gaging stations measure the elevation of the water surface and use an equation to convert this to a water flow rate (in cubic feet per second). The superpower of these stations is that they give the lay of the land. River flow at any location is the response of a watershed to all of the hydrologic processes that have occurred upstream.

The Future of Snow Science: How NASA and Volunteers Map the Deschutes Watershed

Snow has a higher price of entry for those who want to study it. First of all, it is not neatly packaged, like the water sitting behind a dam or flowing in a river. By distributing itself across vast expanses, snow plays very, very hard to get. In some areas, it can be costly, tiring or dangerous to measure. Secondly, snow changes quickly from one location to the next and from one day to the next. Just when scientists think they’ve got it all figured out, they don’t.

The snowpack in Oregon is continuously measured by dozens of automated SNOTEL—SNOwpack TELemetry—stations that determine how deep the snow is and how much water is in it. Snow levels are also measured manually at dozens of other locations called snow courses, where trained personnel take samples of the snow once a month and weigh it to see how much water it contains. A third type of measurement uses lasers carried by drones, airplanes or satellites to create very detailed and accurate maps of snow depth.

The Community Snow Observations (CSO) project is bringing all of these efforts together in the mountains west of Bend over the next three years in an effort to improve what we know about snow and water in the upper Deschutes River watershed. Initially supported by NASA and now by the Bureau of Reclamation, CSO will be collecting snow depth data from volunteers armed with avalanche probes and smartphones. The project will also measure snow depths with laser-instrumented planes flying over the basin.

In addition to monitoring the snow, all of these measurements will help computer programs to better model the arrival and departure of the season’s snowpack. For community members who want to contribute to this effort, the CSO Project welcomes volunteers.

This fusion of hands-on measurements, remote measurements and computer models is a perfect example of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Each tool has something to say about the past and the present of snow on the landscape. And the more we learn about today, the more confidence we can have in our ability to predict tomorrow. However, it might be the unpredictability of snow that makes it so magical. As poet Frederick Seidel wrote, “Snow is what it does; it falls and it stays and it goes.” Read more about Community Snow Observations here.

The Smith Rock Aqueduct

Written by Cheryl Parton

Carved into the basalt cliffs above the Crooked River canyon, the Smith Rock Aqueduct is easy to miss. Rock climbers and hikers come for the routes and views, but they may not notice remnants from some of Central Oregon’s lesser-known but most consequential pieces of history.  The aqueduct infrastructure quietly carried water across the gorge for decades, bringing farmland to life.

It dates back to the late 1930s when the federal government was investing in irrigation projects across the West. As part of the federal Deschutes Project, overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the job was ambitious: moving water from the Crooked River to dry farmland north of Bend.

Engineers faced a formidable challenge at Smith Rock, where the sheer rock faces plunge hundreds of feet into the canyon below. Rather than reroute water or lose elevation, designers opted for a steel pipeline supported by reinforced concrete piers to span the gorge. Construction was completed in the 1940s and played a key role in regional development.

The impact was lasting. Reliable irrigation transformed thousands of acres of high desert into productive farmland, fueling Jefferson County’s agricultural economy. Potatoes, alfalfa and grain became staples, and rural communities grew alongside newly irrigated fields.

As Smith Rock gained international recognition as a climbing destination and state park, the aqueduct faded into the background, hardly noticed. The 1945 Smith Rock canal system was replaced by a pressurized pipe system as of 2022 to modernize water delivery.

Today, the Smith Rock Aqueduct stands as a reminder of an era when federal engineering projects paved the way for Central Oregon’s future.