St. George • With the start of the normal spring runoff season just over a week away, southwest Utah is still in the grip of a severe drought with little relief in sight.
Despite several storms in the area over the past month, roughly 95 % percent of Washington County and just under 40% of Iron County are still mired in extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
“To get out of the extreme drought conditions, the area needs a lot more storms,” said Monica Traphagan, lead meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake Office. “It doesn’t look like that is going to happen.”
As dry as the region’s winter was, it is no longer the worst on record. Recent storms boosted snowpacks in the southwest Utah mountains from a historically bad 25% of average at the beginning of March to 65% this week.
“We have pulled out of that record-breaking poor [snowpack], which is certainly good,” Utah Snow Survey supervisor Jordan Clayton said. “But that doesn’t mean we are out of the danger zone.”
Poor snowpack, parched soil
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In other words, he added, a snowpack that is 65% of normal still ranks in the 16th percentile, making it one of the poorest recorded by the SNOWTEL system since 1980. SNOTEL, or snow telemetry sites, measure snow density and water content.
All told, Clayton added, the snow levels at the SNOWTEL sites in the mountains of southwestern Utah range between four and nine inches below average for this time of year. Equally concerning is the soil, which Clayton said remains extremely dry.
Even after the recent storms, he added, the soil in southwest Utah ranks among the driest recorded in 20 years, which is when the sensors were first installed to measure soil-moisture levels. That can negatively impact the amount of water that flows from the mountains and reaches rivers and reservoirs during the spring runoff that stretches from April through July.
Doug Bennett, conservation manager for the Washington County Water Conservancy District, said typical water years result in the soil staying moist throughout the winter and most of the spring runoff going to rivers and storage reservoirs.
“But with a small snowpack like we have …, much of the runoff goes straight into the soil,” he said.
Clayton said his office projects that the runoff in southwestern Utah will be 31% of normal. For the Virgin River, which supplies most of Washington County’s water, the runoff is forecast to be 33% of average, while the Santa Clara River’s predicted runoff is 20% of what it typically receives. The runoff for Coal Creek above Cedar City is projected to be 27% of normal.
Spring runoff won’t refill reservoirs
Fortunately, thanks to wetter-than-average winters over the past two years, southwest Utah reservoirs are about 70% of capacity, which Clayton said is still down 15% from this time a year ago.
“If we get reasonable runoff,” Clayton continued, “we’ll replenish the water in some of those reservoirs. But it is looking very unlikely at this point that we’re going to get a reasonable runoff.”
Clayton said several significant storms are needed to get the area’s snowpack and stream flows back to normal.
“We anticipate about a 5% chance of that happening in that region, and that number is getting lower every day,” he said. “So the situation is still quite concerning and we need to converse as much water as we can.”
