As summer comes on some of us are watching the river conditions and right now they are on a rather poor track. Record low flows for this point in a year at Porter is somewhere around 400 cfs and average for years is about 810 cfs. We had a bump with the rain that came through but the Chehalis at Porter is pojected to be at 572 cfs by July 1st and the lower tribs are performmming in a similiar manner. That is the good news as the Chehalis at Doty is at record lows now as is Chehalis at Gand Mound. The water quality has been fine in tide water and nothing much out of the ordinary except for the schools of rather small fish I posted about earlier.

Looking forward I imagine we will hear a lot about flows but frankly for adults returning it is a normal thing for the Chehalis Basin. For the juvenile rearing areas not so much. Unless something dramatic happens they are going to get hammered with the low flows, high water temperatures, and low DO.

So our late spring and summer so far has rather nice for us land lubbers and not so much for the fish. Long range forecast ( taken with some optimism ) is July cooler than normal first to weeks and warmer than normal last two weeks. August little wet cooler than normal and Sept mostly dry / warmer than normal with some cool spells.

So summer for us OK but for the rearing areas not so much.