Still Utah drought? Hm, maybe not ...

A week's heavy snowfall has improved Utah's snowpack picture dramatically — to the extent that hopes are soaring that the state's five-year drought might be all but over.

In just the past week, the snowpack continued to build throughout the state. On the statewide average, Utah's snow water content is at 123 percent of normal for Jan. 7. Some regions are much better off.

From just the first of the year, the Weber-Ogden rivers basin jumped from 116 percent to 135 percent of the normal snow cover; the Provo River-Utah Lake-Jordan River basin went from 121 percent to 136 percent, and the Tooele Valley-Vernon Creek watershed rose from 149 percent to a whopping 198 percent of normal.

In each case, the percentage was a comparison with the amount of snowpack the region could expect during a typical year at the time it was measured. That means the increase doesn't only reflect the normal increase in snow cover but an actual step-up in the rate of snowfall.

"Oh, it's fantastic," Mark Eubank, KSL chief meteorologist, said Wednesday. "In the northern part of the state the snowpack is running about 140 percent of normal. That's the area primarily from Provo north."

A storm system hit on Wednesday and another was expected to "brush by" on Saturday without depositing much moisture, but after that the weather was expected to turn drier for about two weeks.

Also, Eubank said, the icy conditions should moderate. For the past few days highs have been in the 20s, instead of the usual mid-30s for early January. But next week the temperature should be more normal, he said.

Even if the ground soaks up 20 percent of the snowpack, because ground moisture is low, he said, that could still result in a fine runoff in April. If the snowpack is 140 percent of normal in April, and 20 percent goes into the ground, that could leave 120 percent of the normal level, Eubank said.

However, even with a fine runoff, water users in the Bear River and Sevier River regions could be in trouble this summer.

"As far as our snowpack is concerned, we are right where we want to be this time of year," said Randy Julander, snow survey supervisor for the U.S. National Resource Conservation Service in Salt Lake City. "Snowpacks across the state are all above to well-above average in some areas, with the exception of the Escalante."

Even in the Escalante River basin, the snowpack is nearly normal, at 89 percent.