Snowstorms that battered most of Utah the past few days triggered dozens of traffic accidents and forced residents to drag out the show shovels. But the storm clouds had a silver lining: an improved snowpack.

Utah's snow cover, which largely dictates what sort of spring runoff the semiarid state will have in spring and summer, is "basically in very good shape in the north, and down south we're coming up but we're still way behind what we'd like to be," said Ray Wilson, hydrologist with the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service in Salt Lake City.

"Southeastern Utah really came up."

A week ago, residents of that section faced a snowpack only 36 percent of the normal level. But Monday morning, it was measured at 59 percent.

"That's a pretty healthy jump," he said.

A SNOTEL automatic reporting station in Cedar City found snow depth had doubled in a week. While still lower than it was last year, "it's come up quite a bit."

In southwestern Utah, the Virgin River region had 39 percent of normal a week ago but the recent snowstorms raised it to 55 percent. "That's up 16 percent from last week," Wilson noted.

Still, the snowpack is meager in many parts of southern Utah. People in the south who are without reservoir storage may see some water shortages this year. "If they're working off a reservoir, they'll probably be in good shape this year," he said.

"That last storm really hit the southern part of the state heavy."

Reservoir storage throughout the Beehive State is generally excellent. An exception is Bear Lake on the Utah-Idaho border. More than half a decade of drought means the lake is unlikely to fill this year, even though the snowpack on the Bear River's tributaries is 124 percent of typical.

"It depends on the timing of the runoff as to how much they (water managers) can put in the reservoir," Wilson said. To meet needs, much of the water will have to be distributed as soon as the snowmelt adds it to the system.

Farmers whose main water source is the Bear River likely will face some shortages.

At Stewart Dam, near the border on the Utah side, inflow to Bear Lake is projected to be about 250,000 acre-feet, "only about a third" of the amount needed to fill the depleted lake this year.

Snowpack figures are encouraging throughout most of the state: 114 percent of normal on the Weber and Ogden rivers, 107 percent along the Duchesne River drainage, 111 percent on the Dirty Devil River near Hanksville, 122 percent in the Provo River-Utah Lake-Jordan River region.

The figures are less impressive, but not awful, on Vernon Creek, Tooele Valley, 87 percent; and the Green River tributaries on the north slope of the Uinta Mountains, at 86 percent of normal.

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