Lewis and Clark County, Montana
East-slope Continental Divide · Helena · Missouri River headwaters and Sun River · I-15 connects Great Falls 90 miles north
- Check current snowpack, drought, streamflow, and soil moisture before stocking, hay buying, or destocking.
- See where Lewis and Clark 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 10 brand inspector and verify cattle-buyer bonds before consigning.
Snowpack · SWE
Snow Water Equivalent — water that would result if today's snowpack melted now.
Water-Year Precip
Total precipitation since Oct 1 — the start of the NRCS water year.
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
No Montana Mesonet soil-moisture station in this county.
Precip Anomaly
Inches above (+) or below (−) the 1901–2000 average for the latest completed 1-, 3- and 12-month periods (NOAA NCEI, monthly data) — 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 1901–2000 average for the latest completed 1-, 3- and 12-month periods (NOAA NCEI Climate at a Glance, monthly data). 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 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.
Lewis and Clark County in context
Adjacent counties in the the Missouri headwaters corridor. Lewis and Clark County shares the Continental Divide and Big Belt snowpack with these neighbors.
Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.
Snowpack & Moisture Detail
SNOTEL station-by-station read for Lewis and Clark County. The dashboard above gives current aggregate; this section shows where the water actually is.
Lewis and Clark County snowpack is near or above median at higher elevations; lower stations well below at the last spring reading (June 4, 2026). Snowpack has since melted out for the season, so this section shows how the 2026 snow season ended, not current conditions. Four SNOTEL stations monitor county snowpack. Lewis and Clark County watershed snowpack near or above normal (county avg 103% of median); highest at Copper Camp (127%), lowest at Wood Creek (76%).
| Station | Elev (ft) | SWE (in) | % of Median | Relevance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copper Bottom | 5,200 | 0.0 | 87% | Lewis and Clark County — elevation 5200 ft |
| Wood Creek | 5,970 | 0.0 | 76% | Lewis and Clark County — elevation 5970 ft |
| Copper Camp | 6,980 | 0.0 | 127% | Lewis and Clark County — elevation 6980 ft |
| Nevada Ridge | 7,030 | 0.0 | 122% | Lewis and Clark County — elevation 7030 ft |
Basin Index: Lewis and Clark County watershed snowpack near or above normal (county avg 103% of median); highest at Copper Camp (127%), lowest at Wood Creek (76%). Drought Monitor (valid 2026-09-08): No drought (D1+) in the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 2%, D1 0%, D2 0%, D3 0%, D4 0%. Station snapshot as of September 17, 2026 — live dashboard above is current.
Two-Week Rainfall
Observed (prior 14 days) and forecast (next 14 days) · Lewis and Clark County · as of 2026-09-17
| Period | Window | Rain (in) | Normal (in) | % of Normal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prior 2 weeks (observed) | Sep 3 – Sep 16, 2026 | 0.16 | 0.70 | 23% |
| Next 2 weeks (forecast) | Sep 17 – Sep 30, 2026 | 1.22 | 0.60 | 203% |
Observed detail: 3 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.07 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
The Missouri River through Lewis and Clark County is impounded in three reservoirs — Holter, Hauser, and Canyon Ferry — before exiting at Toston into Broadwater County. Prickly Pear Creek, Tenmile Creek, and the Dearborn River are the principal agricultural tributaries.
The Missouri system in Lewis and Clark County supports irrigated agriculture primarily on valley floors along Prickly Pear Creek south of Helena and along the Missouri bottom above Canyon Ferry Reservoir near Townsend. Water rights on the main tributaries are heavily subscribed, with many rights dating to the 1870s–1890s placer and agricultural era around Helena. Canyon Ferry Reservoir (Bureau of Reclamation) is the dominant water storage feature; its late-spring fill level largely determines how much supplemental irrigation is available July–September. The Dearborn River north of Wolf Creek carries significant flow and supports irrigated operations in its lower canyon, but diversion rights are senior and competition is intense in low-water years. The Sun River drainage runs through the northern portion of the county near Augusta, providing a separate water source for the open-range country east of the Divide. Bench and upland operations rely primarily on stock ponds and seasonal springs rather than stream rights.
Federal Grazing Leases
BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Lewis and Clark County
| System | Allotments | Permitted use | Public acres |
|---|---|---|---|
| BLM | 55 | 4,939 AUMs | 53,477 |
| U.S. Forest Service | 29 | 14,128 head-months | 229,186 |
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 Lewis and Clark 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 2,213,364 acres · land in farms 996,169 acres (45% of the county).
🗺 Open the interactive land map for Lewis and Clark County →
See crops, range, irrigated fields, public land and ownership parcels drawn live on the map.
Principal crops — official vs. satellite
| Crop | USDA Census 2022 (acres harvested) | Satellite CDL 2023 (acres present) |
|---|---|---|
| Winter wheat | 5,899 | 7,841 |
| Spring wheat | withheld | 2,764 |
| Durum wheat | withheld | 683 |
| Barley | 6,647 | 10,330 |
| Oats | 500 | 280 |
| Corn | withheld | 367 |
| Alfalfa hay | 29,125 | 28,502 |
| Other hay | 11,949 | 18,249 |
| Dry peas | withheld | 411 |
| Chickpeas | withheld | 147 |
| Canola | 1,736 | 352 |
| Flaxseed | withheld | 89 |
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
| Land class | USDA Census 2022 | Satellite CDL 2023 | DOR assessment 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cropland (total) | 91,586 | 75,610 | 69,995 |
| of which harvested | 66,924 | — | — |
| Irrigated land | 47,709 | — | 36,413 |
| Pasture & rangeland | 761,405 | 1,109,418 | 583,350 |
| Forest / woodland | 134,747 | 944,240 | 1,093,371 |
| Developed | — | 37,928 | — |
| Water & wetlands | — | 35,402 | — |
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
47,709 USDA Census harvested irrigated cropland, 2022 | — DNRC mapped remote-sensed irrigated extent | 36,413 DOR assessed tax classification, 2026 |
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 Lewis and Clark 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 Lewis and Clark County.
Cattle production
Lewis and Clark County runs a mix of cow-calf, backgrounding, and some retained ownership through yearling phase. The Rocky Mountain Front country northwest of Augusta supports large cow-calf operations that use the Sun River and Teton River drainages plus Forest Service allotments on the Lewis and Clark National Forest. Valley operations along Prickly Pear Creek and south of Helena tend toward smaller 100–400 cow outfits on deeded ground with limited public-land access. Several ranches in the Holter Lake and Wolf Creek corridor combine Missouri bottom irrigated hay with upland dry pasture. USFS allotments on the Helena National Forest are central to summer production for operations on the east-slope foothill country.
Hay & winter feed
Alfalfa and alfalfa-grass mixes dominate irrigated valley floor production; timothy-brome mixtures are more common at higher elevations in the South Hills and MacDonald Pass foothill country. First cut runs late May to mid-June at valley elevations; second cut in late July or August. Canyon Ferry-area bottom ground averages 2.5–3.0 tons per acre alfalfa in good water years. Dry-land hay (crested wheatgrass and native grass) supplements irrigated production on bench ground around Augusta and north of Helena.
Logistics · sale barns & trucking
Primary livestock marketing moves through Helena (I-15) north to the Great Falls auction or east on US-12/I-90 to Billings. Midland Livestock in Belt (Cascade County) handles some north-county cattle. Helena itself has no active livestock auction; trucking distances of 90–240 miles are typical for marketing. Brand inspection District 10 headquartered at Helena covers the county. I-15 provides year-round reliable trucking north–south; US-12 over McDonald Pass is the west corridor but has weight and seasonal restrictions.
Licensed Processing Plants
2 federally inspected plants operating in Lewis and Clark 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.