"Three days from now, Hayden Fork (Duchesne County) at 9,000 feet will be melted out."

A lot of Utah's rivers have already peaked, he said. Julander advised the water users to keep water pouring into their reservoirs. He quipped, "If you aren't catching water now, there ain't going to be any later."

An official report by the service, posted on the Internet, says bluntly, "This March was a complete disaster for snowpacks."

The U.S. Drought Monitor, posted on the Internet at www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html, places almost the entire state in the category D-1, "Drought — Moderate." The exceptions are extreme southwestern and southeastern parts of the state, which are labeled D-2 for "Drought — Severe."

Brian McInerney, hydrologist with the National Weather Service office on North Temple, said that during March temperatures were 10 degrees to 15 degrees above normal for "almost all of the month."

In the area of precipitation, he said, it was "overall an abysmal March." More storms are expected in April, but they will be "way too little, way too late" to save the snowpack.

A relatively silvery lining to the picture is provided by a report on the status of Utah reservoirs, distributed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Provo Area Office.

They showed that most of the state's major reservoirs are well over half full, with some exceptions. The reason is that for the past two years, the runoff has been good, allowing reservoirs to inch up.

Those listed as less than 50 percent full are: Huntington North, at 15 percent of capacity with no inflow, and Upper Stillwater, at 5 percent full with 37 cubic feet per second inflow.

Some important reservoirs like Currant Creek, Deer Creek, East Canyon, Echo, Flaming Gorge, Hyrum, Newton, Rockport and Starvation are in the range of 86 percent to 99 percent full.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com