Cascade County in context

Adjacent counties in the the Missouri–Sun River corridor. Cascade County shares the Rocky Mountain Front snowpack with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

SNOTEL station-by-station read for Cascade County. The dashboard above gives current aggregate; this section shows where the water actually is.

Cascade County’s primary water supply flows from Rocky Mountain Front snowpack delivered via the Sun River and its Bureau of Reclamation canal system into the Missouri River at Great Falls. The Sun River Project — Gibson and Pishkun reservoirs — is the backbone of irrigated hay production on the county’s benchlands.

Basin Index: Sun River at Augusta and Gibson Reservoir inflows drive irrigation allocation for the county’s 100,000-plus irrigated acres. Drought Monitor (valid 2026-11-10): No drought (D1+) in the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 0%, D1 0%, D2 0%, D3 0%, D4 0%. Station snapshot as of November 13, 2026 — live dashboard above is current.

Two-Week Rainfall

Observed (prior 14 days) and forecast (next 14 days) · Cascade County · as of 2026-11-13

Observed detail: 1 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.12 in.

Forecast source: NWS/NOAA api.weather.gov (days 1–7) blended with Open-Meteo gridded model (days 8–14). The next-14-day total is model-derived — NOAA quantitative precipitation forecast is precise only through ~7 days, and days 8–14 are a model blend, not an observed gauge reading.

Moisture Outlook: 1, 3, 6 and 12 Months

Expected precipitation against the 1991–2020 normal · Cascade County · NOAA seasonal outlook issued Oct 15, 2026; monthly outlook Oct 31, 2026 · refreshed monthly

• Odds, November 2026: 39% chance of a drier-than-normal month, 33% near normal, 28% wetter.
• Odds, Nov 2026–Jan 2027: 45% drier than normal, 33% near normal, 22% wetter.
• Temperature: November 2026 leans warmer than normal (55% chance of a warmer-than-normal month); Nov 2026–Jan 2027 leans warmer than normal (45% chance of a warmer-than-normal three months). Warmer weather pulls more moisture out of soil and snowpack.
• Spring growing season (Apr–Jun 2027): these three months normally bring 7.77 in, about 46% of the year’s moisture. NOAA’s early read: 45% drier, 33% near normal, 22% wetter — expected 7.33 in (94% of normal).

How it is built: NOAA Climate Prediction Center outlook odds read across Cascade County, applied to the county’s 1991–2020 precipitation record (NOAA NCEI). Inches are county-wide averages that include mountain ground, so valley and bench ranches usually receive less; the percent of normal carries over better than the inches. Full method and limits → Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.

Water Rights, Irrigation & Land Ownership

The Missouri River bisects Cascade County east–west through Great Falls, receiving the Sun River from the west and the Smith River drainage from the south near Ulm. The Sun River confluence near Fort Shaw marks the upper end of the county’s most intensively irrigated corridor.

The Sun River Irrigation Project holds the most senior surface rights in the county, with Bureau of Reclamation contracts dating to the early 1900s that cover roughly 90,000 acres of bench ground between Simms, Sun River, and Great Falls. Rights outside the project — particularly on Highwood Creek and Arrow Creek drainages — are generally junior 1880s–1910s vintage and are subject to proration in low-water years. The Missouri mainstem carries substantial flow but most direct-flow rights are senior and already heavily appropriated. Groundwater wells serve livestock on drier benchlands east of Great Falls where surface delivery is unavailable. Over-allocation on the Sun River system means junior holders can face shutoffs in dry years, making reservoir carryover storage the critical number to watch each spring.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Cascade County

AUMs (BLM) and head-months (USFS) are both animal-unit-months — one animal grazing for one month, the standard measure of authorized use. Acres are BLM public acres and USFS GIS acres on the mapped allotments.

Statewide maps: BLM allotment map · Forest Service allotment map. Excludes Montana DNRC state-trust grazing leases.

Land Resources

Three independent estimates of how Cascade County’s land is used — shown side by side, never blended

Every acreage figure below comes from an independent source that measures the land a different way. We show them side by side — and never blend reported acreage, satellite pixels and tax classifications into one unexplained number. Total county area 1,726,852 acres · land in farms 1,364,780 acres (79% of the county).

🗺  Open the interactive land map for Cascade County →
See crops, range, irrigated fields, public land and ownership parcels drawn live on the map.

Principal crops — official vs. satellite

These columns measure different things, so they should not match. The Census counts acres actually harvested in the census year, as reported by producers; the Cropland Data Layer counts every acre the satellite saw in that crop, including fields in a crop–fallow rotation and stands not harvested. Winter wheat is the clearest example: much of the county’s wheat ground sits in fallow in any given year, so the satellite total runs well above harvested acres. CDL also over-attributes hay and forage on native range. “Withheld” means the Census suppressed the value to protect an individual operation’s privacy.

How the county’s acres classify

Three ways of counting the same ground. Census figures are producer-reported acres in farms; the satellite column is a wall-to-wall pixel classification of the whole county (so it also sees developed land, water and non-farm ground the others do not); the assessment column is the Montana Department of Revenue’s parcel-level tax classification (CAMA), which is why its cropland total tracks the Census closely while the satellite tends to run higher. Developed and open-water rows come only from the satellite. Where they disagree, no single number is “wrong” — they are measuring different things.

Irrigated land, three independent ways

The single most important acreage figure for a cattle operation, and the three sources genuinely differ. The Census counts acres actually irrigated and harvested in the census year; the Montana DOR figure is what is classified and taxed as irrigated; the DNRC mapping captures the full remote-sensed irrigated extent, including ground that carries irrigation but was idle or in another use that year — so it usually reads highest. We publish all three rather than pick one.

What each estimate means

• USDA Census of Agriculture — producer-reported, the official record. Highly credible, but taken every five years and suppressed in counties where a value would identify a single operation.
• Satellite (Cropland Data Layer) — USDA’s annual, wall-to-wall satellite classification. Complete county coverage every year, but it infers crops from imagery, so it mislabels some ground and over-calls hay and forage on native range.
• Tax / assessment — Montana Department of Revenue parcel-level classification from the CAMA assessment roll (2026 tax year), aggregated from the Montana State Library cadastral. Parcel- and ownership-based; a land classification, not an annual crop report.

Sources: USDA NASS Census of Agriculture 2022 (Quick Stats); USDA Cropland Data Layer 2023 (CropScape zonal statistics, USDA-NASS); Montana Department of Revenue CAMA assessment acreage via the MSDI cadastral parcels layer (tax year 2026); Montana DNRC Statewide Irrigation dataset. Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.

Local Help

Verified contacts and official destinations for Cascade County — not a directory dump, just where to actually call

Extension, USDA, market, brand and diagnostic links go to the official Montana source; the DNRC office and phone are the specific regional office serving this county. Provider directories (veterinarians, feed dealers) will be added only once a repeatable verification standard is in place. Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.

Production & Sales

Operation character, hay base, and how cattle reach market from Cascade County.

Cattle production

Cascade County runs a mix of cow-calf operations on the Sun River benchlands and larger stocker/yearling outfits that use the county’s irrigated hay base for winter backgrounding. Operations in the Highwood Mountains foothill zone tend toward smaller family cow-calf units, while the flat benchlands east and north of Great Falls support bigger grain-and-cattle diversified outfits. Several producers hold USFS grazing allotments in the Highwood and Little Belt Mountain ranger districts, typically moving cattle to forest range in late June. Packing plant access via I-15 south to Butte and north to Canada makes Cascade a natural marketing crossroads for north-central Montana cattle.

Hay & winter feed

Alfalfa and alfalfa-grass mix dominate irrigated production on Sun River canal ground; first cutting typically runs late June, second cutting mid-August. Dryland hay on benchlands east of Great Falls is predominantly native grass and crested wheatgrass, cut once in July. Sun River Project deliveries govern timing — late-season proration can push second-cutting dates and reduce tonnage. In below-normal snowpack years, producers should lock in hay contracts by July rather than waiting on a second cutting that may not materialize.

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Cascade County cattle move primarily through Northern Livestock Video Auction and direct shipper sales to regional feedlots rather than a single dominant sale barn; the closest ring sale is Sieben Livestock in Helena or auction facilities in Havre. I-15 runs north–south through Great Falls connecting directly to Shelby (Canadian border) and south to Helena and Butte. US-87 east and US-89 north-south provide secondary truck routes to Lewistown and Choteau. Great Falls itself is the regional trucking hub with fuel, scales, and overnight facilities, making it a logical staging point for long-haul loads to Nebraska or Kansas feedlots.

Licensed Processing Plants

2 federally inspected and 1 state-inspected plants operating in Cascade County — establishment IDs and contacts, verified against the federal and state directories

Meat from federally inspected and state-inspected plants can be sold; custom-exempt plants are not listed here. Verified August 2026 against the USDA FSIS Meat, Poultry & Egg Product Inspection Directory and the Montana Department of Livestock state plant list (Jan 2026). Grants of inspection change — call before you haul.