For farmers along the Missouri River Basin in eastern Nebraska, the year 2011 sticks out. This was a year of massive summer river flooding of farmland and farms.
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the summer of 2025 will not be a repeat performance and will actually see less river flow than average.
That’s also the forecast from the North Platte River Basin, which feeds irrigation districts in Nebraska’s Panhandle each summer, depending heavily on snowmelt from the mountains.
Missouri forecast
A June 5 report had average runoff in May in the Missouri basin system, with the runoff forecast for the basin above Sioux City considered below average. The forecasted releases at Gavins Point Dam north of Crofton, Neb., were at 27,000 cubic feet per second for the rest of June.
That’s a far cry from 2011. Gavins Point — the last of the flood control dams on the Missouri River — saw a record flow release during the Missouri River flood in early July that year of 160,200 cfs. That buried the previous record of 70,000 cfs set in 1997. In fact, that summer, releases from Gavins Point were above 100,000 cfs for 85 straight days.
Downstream, it was devastating for farmers along the river, who saw their planted fields decimated by floodwaters.
This year was very different. “Heavy rainfall in western and central North Dakota and South Dakota during May supplemented the mountain snowmelt runoff,” said John Remus, chief of the Army Corps of Engineers for the Missouri River Basin water management division.
In a news release, Remus noted, “May runoff in the upper basin above Sioux City was average; however, mountain snowpack is melting more rapidly than normal. As a result, the runoff forecast later this summer and fall has been reduced slightly.”
LESS SNOW: With the North Platte Valley basin relying heavily on snowmelt from the Snowy Range mountains for irrigation water, this photo shows less snowmelt than normal at the end of May, according to Nebraska Extension educator Gary Stone. (Gary Stone)
How about out west?
Flows in the North Platte River Basin in the Nebraska Panhandle, which also are dependent on snowmelt, are forecasted below normal too, says Gary Stone, Nebraska Extension educator. This affects irrigators heavily.
In April at the Yonts Water Conference, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation indicated there probably would not be water allocations on the North Platte River for the 2025 season, Stone says.
“But recently, I heard there will be water allocations due to less-than-normal snowpack water runoff,” he explains. “For the North Platte River Basin, we are at 62% of normal for the year. We will just have to wait and see how much precipitation we get across the North Platte Valley in Wyoming and Nebraska’s Panhandle to determine if allocations will take place.”
Stone says the two major irrigation districts in the North Platte Valley — Pathfinder in the north and Goshen/Gering-Fort Laramie in the south — did a “hay run” in May for about 10-14 days and then shut down.
“Pathfinder continues to flow and take water to fill the Inland Lakes, including Minatare and Lake Alice, for irrigation season,” Stone says. “Farmers Irrigation District did not have a ‘hay run’ this spring. Even though they have one of the earliest water rights on the river, most of their water is natural flow, which is down from average.”
Full irrigation flows will start in the beginning of July if they can hold off that long, and usually it ends in the middle of September.
“Other smaller irrigation districts have their own water rights and restrictions, but most rely on the natural flow of the river, with some holding some storage water usually in Glendo reservoir,” Stone notes.
Late May and early June were wetter in the Panhandle, and that keeps crops going. Stone visited the Snowy Range mountains in late May, and there was less snow than in the past, noting that snow still can fall in the region into early summer.
Tunnel project
Stone says that tunnels No. 1 and No. 2 at Goshen/Gering-Fort Laramie Irrigation District are still in the preparation process for replacement.
These tunnels on the main canal collapsed in July 2019, causing a washout of the supply canal south of Fort Laramie, disrupting irrigation water delivery on 107,000 acres of farmland in Wyoming and Nebraska.
The initial study on this project was in 2020-21, and since then, the cost has doubled. So, the district is looking for other funding sources. If all the permitting goes through, the plan is to start on tunnel No. 2 first.
Tentative plans were to rehabilitate the tunnels over the next two consecutive nonirrigation seasons —with No. 2 set for this fall, and work beginning on No. 1 in the fall of 2026 — with construction completed by spring in 2028.