1 Attachment(s)
Water - So far, So good...
Looking good so far..... might have some major amounts of water in the canyons this year. Looking like Zion Narrows permits could be a problem depending on what happens next. San Rafael and Muddy will probably flow all year. So far Escalante is the only drainage sucking a chub.
Utah snowpack: Levels exceed historical averages statewide
By Brandon Loomis
The Salt Lake Tribune
If you think it looks white out there this winter, just think of the green that will follow.
Utah's glorious snow year is also shaping into that most elusive of 21st century seasons: a lush spring. Snowpack is better than historical averages right across the state, in some places way better. And ranchers hurt by drought and monstrous range fires last year are smiling about a possible reprieve.
Alta ski area tied a January record with 178.5 inches, and that snowfall's water content of 15.43 inches broke the 1996 record, the National Weather Service announced.
It doesn't end there in the mountain canyons. Snowpack ranges from 170 percent of a normal winter in southern Utah to 100 percent at the Idaho border, National Weather Service hydrologist Brian McInerney said. Friday morning found him skiing in Park City.
"It's killer," he reported by cell phone. The Wasatch Mountains are ranging from 120 percent to 140 percent of normal snowfall.
"It's the first year in a long time we've had snow cover from one end of the state to the other, north to south," Utah Farm Bureau Federation executive Randy Parker said Friday by cell phone as he drove through snow in Cedar City. He was heading home from a St. George rangeland conference where everyone was thrilled with the outlook.
The wet winter bodes well for re-seeded grasslands where last summer's fires forced ranchers to pare their herds, he said. Sales at the Salina livestock auction, for instance, were up 40 percent last year because ranchers lacked forage and hay.
"Some of the [regional] snowpacks and moistures in southern Utah are at April levels, which is really exciting," Parker said.
If the weather holds - that is, if spring doesn't heat up too quickly and the snowmelt comes down in an orderly fashion - it should fill reservoirs that were mostly depleted at the end of summer, Parker said. And because Utah's agriculture industry is 80 percent livestock, soil moisture and thick grass on the range is crucial.
U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Lola Bird said the soil moisture outlook is good so far, but thick grass isn't assured just yet.
"It's important that we also get moisture during the growth period in April, May and June," she said.
Northern Utah's winter so far is typical of a La Ni
