Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Ed Yeates ReportingExperts who measure water flow in and out of northern Utah's reservoirs say this year is proving to be most difficult. In fact, it may be the most difficult monitoring season they've seen in years.
In case you think water management folks control water flow in and out of storage areas based on the Farmer's Almanac, look again. In the war room at the Weber County Water Conservancy District, computers now watch and analyze the rise and drop in some 12 reservoirs, almost on an hourly basis.
The data is fed into a central location through multiple instruments installed on rivers, streams, and behind the storage dams themselves.
Tage Flint, Weber Basin Water Conservancy District: "We make most of our decisions on 24 hour increments to determine how much we ought to hold or release from our reservoirs at any one time."
Water in and water out is more that just tilting the bucket at will. There's a science of hydrology here. Computers juggle everything from predictive models of how much snow is remaining in the mountains, how fast it's melting and what the streams can handle. And it varies from day to day.
What makes this season especially difficult...
Tage Flint: "The springtime storms have really thrown a wrench in the works where we've had much more run-off due to local storms than we've had in past years."
Tage Flint says, compared to last year, this April has been much wetter, producing much more low elevation moisture. And right now, that's a challenge in the war room.
