October 1st "Climate and Water Report", NRCS-Utah Snow Survey
Current Valley Conditions (SCAN)
Utah’s Valley locations ended the 2020 water year with an average of 7.7 inches of precipitation. While this is low, it doesn’t tell the whole story; almost 70% of this precipitation accumulated during the first half of the water year. Like last summer, there just wasn’t any monsoonal moisture during the growing season. The exceptional dryness during the growing season is reflected in current drought conditions and the extended fire season. Last year at this time, only 54% of Utah was designated in any category of drought, now 100% of the state is Abnormally Dry (DO) or worse. More troubling is that conditions in 13% of the state are currently designated as Exceptional Drought (D4). Not surprisingly, soil moisture levels are very low- just 26% of saturation compared to 28% last year. Although dry conditions are likely to persist into the near future, we can hope that October will bring a big pattern change and the start of storms more characteristic of winter.
Current Mountain Conditions (SNOTEL)
The 2020 water year drew to a close at the end of September. The water year precipitation ended at 76% of average, but as noted above, most of that moisture was received months ago. The late spring and summer seasons provided far below average precipitation, including only 30% of normal for the month of September. Statewide soil moisture is hovering close to record lows for the observed period, and reservoir storage is at 62% of capacity compared to 74% last year. Water Availability Indices (WAI) are all below normal except for the Bear River basin and its subwatersheds. Several basins in Utah have exceptionally low WAI values, including the Blacks Fork, Smiths Creek, San Pitch, Eastern Uintas, and Lower Sevier. We desperately need replenishing snow this winter!
Also, SNOTEL sites are situated in mountain environments in order to measure the snowpack’s water content and predict spring runoff, which unfortunately also means that they tend to be vulnerable to wildfires and other natural phenomena. September saw two of Utah’s SNOTEL sites go down. First, the Parrish Creek site fell prey to the massive windstorm event that impacted the Wasatch Front. Located above Centerville near Skyline Drive, the winds toppled an extraordinary number of trees around the site, including several that landed on the snow pillow and knocked the snow depth sensor arm sideways. The Snow Survey crew plans to rebuild this site by mid-October. More recently, the Brown Duck SNOTEL site (south slope of the Uintas, northwest of Mountain Home) partially burned down. As of October 1st, fires in that area were still active, so rebuilding the site will need to wait until conditions are safe. We are hopeful that the weather will hold- if so the Snow Survey staff will bring in a new shelter and repair the electronics in late October. However, this is a high elevation site so it’s possible that early snow will block passage until next summer.
These impacted sites aside, the Utah Snow Survey has been able to manage near-normal field operations this summer despite everything that 2020 has thrown at us...
To read the entire report, please click here.