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ST. GEORGE — A gigantic high-pressure system parked over the Western states is showing no mercy to water managers, delivering record-breaking conditions to perpetuate a fourth year of drought.
Close to 1,000 participants at the second day of the Utah Water Users Association's spring conference heard the grim news they'd been living with since late last year: The West has been snow- and rain-starved, basting in unusual warmth when it should have been winter.
"Everything in the West is exceptionally dry," said Randy Julander, Utah Snow Survey supervisor with the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The meeting room at the Dixie Convention Center in St. George was packed with water district managers, heads of irrigation companies, hydrologists, and representatives from multiple federal, state and local entities.
Julander, joined by Brian McInerney, hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City, described a Western states region that largely suffered through the past six months with the driest conditions logged since record keeping began in 1874, coupled with the least amount of precipitation.
The upper Green River region in Colorado and Wyoming were exceptions that were clipped by a persistent storm pattern that had its attention focused toward the East Coast.
The Salt Lake City area experienced its warmest first 13 days of December in 140 years, and by January the snow on some of Utah's mountains began to melt.
"In a time we are trying to build our snowpack, we had runoff," McInerney said, "which is unheard of."
February experienced temperatures that were 10 to 20 degrees above normal — shattering more records from 1874 — and March has in large measure continued the pattern.
"It is just unbelievably warm," Julander said.
The unprecedented warmth has accelerated conditions by about a month, meaning Utah will experience a less efficient runoff, with soil conditions that will dry out more quickly and streams that have reduced flows even more rapidly.
Early March data shows stream flows throughout the majority of the state that are forecasted to be less than half of what they normally are, and both men warned that the numbers are worse with each passing day absent any storm activity.
"The farther West you go, the worse it gets," McInerney said.
The only bright spot in the presentation were the numbers that show reservoir storage across the state, for the most part, is slightly ahead of where it was this time a year ago.
McInerney said a strong rainy pattern from mid-July into September reduced the irrigation demand on reservoirs, providing some storage "insurance" for this year.
Conference participants are keeping their fingers crossed that a wet spring delivers more relief for the summer head.
"Snow makes water, and we need to get the water on the range," said Steve Osguthorpe, vice president of the Utah Farm Bureau.
Range conditions are already suffering because of the multi-year drought, and the forage will have to improve greatly on both private and public lands, he added.
With more volatility in the snowpack and the state stuck in this dry pattern, Osguthorpe said conditions stress the need for greater water storage and more efficient use of the resource.
Farm Bureau President Leland Hogan said the organization will spread that message to its members as the months play out, urging conservation as much as possible.
"We need to be wise and treat this like the precious resource it is," Hogan said.
