Daniels County in context

Adjacent counties in the the Poplar River Hi-Line corridor. Daniels County shares the northeastern plains moisture system with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

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

Daniels County has no significant mountain snowpack of its own — soil moisture recharge and spring runoff come almost entirely from prairie snowpack and winter precipitation across the flat to rolling plains north of the Poplar River headwaters. The county’s grass and range condition tracks closely with fall soil moisture carry-in and winter snow cover persistence rather than any upstream reservoir system.

Basin Index: Poplar River sub-basin of the Missouri system carries modest flows; upstream storage is minimal and runoff is highly variable year to year. Drought Monitor (valid 2026-07-28): No drought (D1+) in the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 100%, D1 0%, D2 0%, D3 0%, D4 0%. Station snapshot as of August 02, 2026 — live dashboard above is current.

Two-Week Rainfall

Observed (prior 14 days) and forecast (next 14 days) · Daniels County · as of 2026-08-02

Observed detail: 0 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.00 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.

Water Rights, Irrigation & Land Ownership

Daniels County drains primarily into the Poplar River, which flows southeast from the Saskatchewan border through Scobey before joining the Missouri at Poplar in Roosevelt County. The watershed is small and flashy with no significant upstream storage.

The Poplar River system supports limited stock water and some small-scale sub-irrigation in creek bottoms, but there is no major irrigation diversion infrastructure in the county. Water rights are mostly stock water and domestic vintage, many dating to homestead-era filings in the 1910s–1920s. Over-allocation is not a practical concern on most reaches given the low demand, but low-flow years can leave senior stock-water rights holders with little to pump. Secondary water sources are stock dams scattered across the range, which are the primary water supply for most cow-calf operations. The Canadian border to the north means there is no upstream Montana diversion affecting flows. Ranchers dependent on creek-fed dugouts should expect the most variability in dry-cycle years.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Daniels 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 Daniels 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 912,813 acres · land in farms 667,686 acres (73% of the county).

🗺  Open the interactive land map for Daniels 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 Daniels 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 Daniels County.

Cattle production

Daniels County is a classic Hi-Line cow-calf county with operations running predominantly commercial Angus and Angus-cross pairs on native range and tame grass pastures. Most outfits are family-scale, 200–500 cow units, with very few feedlot or retained-ownership programs locally. Grazing is entirely on private and state lease ground — no USFS allotments in this flat plains county. Fall weaning and sale barn movement is the dominant production model, with calves heading to northern plains backgrounding yards or Kansas/Nebraska feedlots.

Hay & winter feed

Native prairie hay and crested wheatgrass dominate the county’s forage base, with minimal irrigated production. Most hay is put up dry from non-irrigated meadows and upland fields, making yield highly dependent on June rainfall. Average first cutting runs late June to mid-July. A dry spring-early summer can cut Daniels County hay yields 30–50% below average, pushing operators into the cash hay market from Valley or Phillips counties.

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Scobey on US-13 is the county seat and primary commercial hub, with Highway 13 connecting south to Glasgow (Valley County) and the Hi-Line rail corridor. Nearest sale barns are at Glasgow (approximately 75 miles) and Plentywood in Sheridan County (about 35 miles east). Trucking to Billings runs 5–6 hours. Seasonal road weight restrictions on county roads can limit heavy truck movement during spring breakup, typically mid-March through late April.