Snow-flocked trees along Marble Creek Pass Road frame a view of Baker Valley on Sunday.

Northeastern Oregon’s mountain snowpack, a key source of water for irrigation and recreation, is starting to pile up earlier than usual.

It’s a promising start to the snowpack season for a region that’s in moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

As of Tuesday, Nov. 5, the water content in the snow at a network of more than 20 automated measuring sites was well above average.

For the Grande Ronde-Burnt-Powder-Imnaha basins, which includes much of Baker, Union and Wallowa counties, the snowpack was more than five times above the average for the date.

In the northern Blue Mountains, which includes the Umatilla and Walla Walla river basins, the figure was about 10 times above average.

Snow amounts are modest — less than a foot, generally — but in many years there is little or snow accumulation even at the higher elevations in the first week of November.

A station near Anthony Lake, in the Elkhorn Mountains northwest of Baker City, showed the snow depth at 12 inches on Tuesday morning.

That station does not measure water content, a statistic based on the weight of the snow.

Snow depth is a less meaningful measure because a foot of powdery snow can contain less water than 6 inches of soggy snow.

In Central Oregon, Mt. Bachelor ski area reported receiving 30 inches of snow over the last seven days. Oregon Department of Transportation webcams showed snow on the side of U.S. Highway 20 at Santiam Pass, elevation 4,766 feet, at noon Tuesday, but none at Santiam Junction, elevation 3,780 feet.