As feared, Idaho’s mountain snowpacks are continuing their slide downward, imperiling adequate irrigation supplies in many Idaho river basins this year.

At least seven basins are currently projected to see surface-water irrigation shortages and at least three more are close to joining them, according to an index in the monthly water fore-cast released Thursday by the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Mountain ranges in the Little Wood and Big Lost basins received only 20 percent of their normal February precipitation. The Snake River is only projected to run at 47 percent of average as measured near Heise. And stations in the NRCS snowpack-measuring network continue to set records: 22 of 100 sites in the region recorded new record-low precipitation figures for November through February, and two in Yellowstone National Park measured their third-lowest snowpacks since 1919.

“Snow appropriations are stuck on Capitol Hill this winter,” states the report’s cover page, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the blizzards that have struck the East Coast this winter.

So, Idaho now enters March and leaves winter behind, with water managers and irrigators likely hoping for a repeat year of late-spring moisture.

This month’s news isn’t all bad. Irrigators relying on the Little Wood River should manage just-adequate supplies, and healthy reservoirs will still somewhat blunt the effect of the poor winter season except for areas like the Salmon Falls and Oakley basins.

But the supply index, which combines reservoir supplies with stream forecasts, now tabs the Big Wood, Big and Little Lost, Henry’s Fork, Snake, Oakley and Salmon Falls basins as having the potential for shortages.

And its writers weren’t entirely optimistic that things will change. March and April tend to carry on dry weather patterns rather than buck the trend, they wrote. But they noted two times when spring storms saved the picture, in 2005 and 2009, and noted the pattern this year at least seems more active than the weather during dry years close to 10 years ago.

One target audience of the report is still better off: winter recreationists can celebrate that there hasn’t been a mid-winter thaw, keeping snow in Idaho’s mountains. Low-elevation snow should soon start melting, and the report warns river runners should prepare their boats and gear as high flows won’t last as long as usual.