Dawson County, Montana
Eastern Montana Yellowstone River breaks · Glendive · Yellowstone River mid-reach · Interstate 94 corridor
- Check current snowpack, drought, streamflow, and soil moisture before stocking, hay buying, or destocking.
- See where Dawson County calves moved in 2023 — destinations, seasonal pattern, and shipping windows.
- Look up water rights, parcels, and ownership via Cadastral, DNRC WRQS, and WaterMapper.
- Reach the District 5 brand inspector and verify cattle-buyer bonds before consigning.
Snowpack · SWE
No SNOTEL stations in this county. Basin-index snowpack not tracked.
Water-Year Precip
Water-year precip index not tracked for this county.
Drought Monitor
Worst drought class anywhere in the county per the U.S. Drought Monitor.
D0 abnormally dry · D1 moderate · D2 severe · D3 extreme · D4 exceptional. Percentages = share of county area at or worse than each class.
Streamflow
Cubic feet per second flowing past the nearest in-county USGS gauge right now.
Soil Moisture
VWC = Volumetric Water Content — the percent of soil volume that is water. Montana Mesonet probe average.
Shallow ≈ 4″ depth · Deep ≈ 20″ depth.
Bands (shallow + deep average): ≥ 30 % moist · 22–30 % adequate · 15–22 % drying · < 15 % dry.
Precip Anomaly
Inches above (+) or below (−) the 10-year normal precipitation for each trailing window. Calendar rolling windows ending today — not the water year (see the separate Water-Year Precip tile for that).
1-mo = last 30 days · 3-mo = last 90 days · 12-mo = trailing year.
12-mo bands: > +1″ wet · −0.5″ to +1″ near normal · −2″ to −0.5″ dry · < −2″ very dry.
Reading this dashboard — what these terms mean
Median vs. mean. We use the median (NRCS standard) so a single very-wet or very-dry year doesn’t skew the baseline.
Water year. Hydrology runs Oct 1 → Sep 30. Most of a year’s snowpack accumulation is captured in the same season it melts.
Percentile (streamflow). 50 = exactly typical for this calendar date. 19 = today’s flow is lower than 81 % of all readings ever recorded on this date. 81 = lower than only 19 %.
VWC (soil moisture). Volumetric Water Content. Rough field bands: under 10 % = dry, 15–25 % = productive growing-season range, over 35 % = saturated.
Drought scale. D0–D4 from the U.S. Drought Monitor, weekly Thursday release. The percentages tell you what fraction of county area is at or worse than each band — a county can be 100 % at D2 with 0 % at D3.
Precip anomaly. Inches above or below the 10-year normal precipitation for that trailing window. Trailing calendar windows ending today, NOT the water year — the Water-Year Precip tile is the water-year measure. Anomaly is in inches; “% of median” is a ratio. Both useful; anomaly is easier to interpret when comparing a dry summer month to a wet spring month.
Forage Condition. A 0–100 county-scale index of rangeland forage conditions relative to this county’s own historical normal, blending satellite-observed vegetation response, growing-season moisture, drought stress, and usability. Higher = more favorable relative to local normal. Categories: 0–25 Poor, 26–50 Fair, 51–75 Good, 76–100 Excellent. Long-Term Forage Potential is a separate long-run rating, not part of the score. Beta — for regional screening and comparison, not a pasture-level forage inventory or stocking-rate recommendation.
How often this updates. The moisture and drought tiles (snowpack, streamflow, soil moisture, rain, water-year precip, drought class) refresh every morning. The Forage Condition score’s satellite vegetation read — and the separate Irrigated Hay/Pasture read — refresh weekly (Mondays), because the underlying satellite imagery only updates on a ~16-day cycle. So the water tiles move day to day; the vegetation reads step forward about once a week.
Dawson County in context
Adjacent counties in the the lower Yellowstone breaks corridor. Dawson County shares the Yellowstone River snowmelt system with these neighbors.
Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.
Snowpack & Moisture Detail
SNOTEL station-by-station read for Dawson County. The dashboard above gives current aggregate; this section shows where the water actually is.
Dawson County’s water future is determined upstream — the Yellowstone River carries snowmelt from as far west as Yellowstone National Park and the Beartooth Plateau through Glendive on its way to the Missouri. The county’s Intake Diversion Dam east of Glendive is the first major diversion on the lower Yellowstone, making Dawson a bellwether for water availability across the entire lower reach. Upland range in the badlands and breaks north and south of the river relies entirely on local precipitation. [needs editorial] — update with current SNOTEL data each season.
Basin Index: Yellowstone River flows at Glendive integrate snowpack from Park, Stillwater, Carbon, Treasure, and Rosebud counties upstream; Intake Diversion Dam is the key local infrastructure chokepoint. [needs editorial — update seasonally] Drought Monitor (valid 2026-06-02): D3 Extreme across 55% of county; D2 Severe across 45% of county. Total area in drought: 100% (valid 2026-06-02). Station snapshot as of June 04, 2026 — live dashboard above is current.
Two-Week Rainfall
Observed (prior 14 days) and forecast (next 14 days) · Dawson County · as of 2026-06-04
| Period | Window | Rain (in) | Normal (in) | % of Normal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prior 2 weeks (observed) | May 21 – Jun 3, 2026 | 0.63 | 1.49 | 42% |
| Next 2 weeks (forecast) | Jun 4 – Jun 17, 2026 | 0.34 | 1.49 | 23% |
Observed detail: 5 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.32 in.
Water Rights & Land Ownership
The Yellowstone River enters Dawson County from the west near Terry and flows east through Glendive, where the Intake Diversion Dam channels water into the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project canals. The county’s irrigation is concentrated along this river corridor, with the badlands uplands entirely dryland.
Dawson County holds some of the most senior Yellowstone River water rights in Montana, with irrigation filings at the Intake Diversion dating to the early 1900s. The Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project straddles Dawson and Richland counties, with the headworks at Intake serving fields from Glendive eastward to Sidney. The Yellowstone is unregulated — there is no upstream dam controlling flows — making Dawson’s water supply directly tied to Beartooth and Absaroka snowpack levels each winter. Over-allocation is a real risk in low-snowpack years; the Montana DNRC has documented significant demand exceeding supply on the lower Yellowstone during drought cycles. Minor tributaries including Cabin Creek and Burns Creek drain the badlands north of Glendive with minimal water rights activity. Dawson County operators on upland range have no surface water rights and depend exclusively on stock dams and rural water systems.
Production & Sales
Operation character, hay base, and how cattle reach market from Dawson County.
Cattle production
Dawson County runs a classic Yellowstone corridor cattle structure: irrigated-bottom cow-calf operations with alfalfa hay base along the river, and larger dryland range outfits in the badlands and coulees north and south of I-94. Commercial Angus-cross pairs are the dominant enterprise. Some stocker and yearling programs use aftermath grazing from irrigated fields in fall. Operation sizes range from 100-cow irrigated-ground outfits near Glendive to 600-plus cow dryland ranches in the breaks. No USFS grazing — all private and state lease in this plains and badlands county.
Hay & winter feed
Irrigated alfalfa from Yellowstone River bottom fields around Glendive is the county’s highest-value forage, typically yielding two to three cuttings with first cutting in early June. Dryland native hay from badlands meadows provides one cut in July, highly dependent on June precipitation. Dawson County is a net hay exporter in average years; in drought years the irrigated bottom hay is largely consumed locally and upland operators compete for limited hay supply from Richland and beyond.
Logistics · sale barns & trucking
Glendive on Interstate 94 is the county seat and eastern Montana’s most strategically located trucking hub — I-94 runs directly to Billings (220 miles, about 2.5 hours) and Bismarck, North Dakota (about 3 hours east). Glendive Livestock is the primary local sale barn. Miles City is 75 miles west and has the larger Northern Livestock Video Auction infrastructure. Rail access via BNSF along the I-94 corridor is available for grain and some livestock movement. County road weight restrictions during spring breakup typically run late March through late April and can delay movement from the breaks ranches.
Dawson County — 2023 Cattle Movement
Source: Montana Department of Livestock, BE-10 brand inspections. Released to Honest Cattle under public-records request. BE-10 inspections are recorded at change of ownership or interstate movement, so totals reflect transactions, not the standing herd.
Top destinations outside Montana
| State | Head | Share of county total |
|---|---|---|
| Nebraska | 4,562 | 24.4% |
| North Dakota | 2,566 | 13.7% |
| South Dakota | 2,156 | 11.5% |
| Minnesota | 1,107 | 5.9% |
| Texas | 712 | 3.8% |
When Dawson County cattle moved in 2023
Notes: A single animal can be inspected more than once in a year if it changes hands or moves across state lines twice; destination is the buyer's state of record, which is usually but not always the final feedlot. Inspection county = where the inspection took place (often an auction yard or shipping point), not necessarily where the cattle were raised. Data covers cattle only (BE-10) and excludes horse and bison inspections.