Drought, fire danger intensify

San Juan County farmers fear they will lose a wheat crop.

Salt Lake County residents are installing lawn sprinkler systems.

Both reactions are in response to Utah's bleak water outlook.

Depending on location, conditions range from mildly dry to severe drought as the state enters its fourth straight year of below-average precipitation. Things are bad enough that this week Gov. Mike Leavitt signed an executive order declaring Utah to be in an emergency with a "statewide agricultural disaster."

The snowpack in Utah's southeastern corner, for example, is already gone. In a normal year it would last into late May or June, said Ed Scherick, San Juan County planner.

"Basically, there's no runoff," he said.

A new set of storms swept into Utah Friday night and early this morning, bringing a 70 percent chance of rain today to the Salt Lake area and a 50 percent chance Sunday. More rain may fall Wednesday and Thursday.

Like the storms that blew through a week ago, the expected rains are likely only to take a bit of the edge off the drought without breaking it.

Still, whatever precipitation may come, "it doesn't hurt," said Larry Dunn, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service's Salt Lake forecast office.

The recent weather patterns have added water to the snowpack in a few areas. And rainfall soaked some farm fields, so demand for irrigation dropped, Dunn said, lessening the draw on reservoirs.

"I've got to make sure that everybody understands that I'm just happy, I'm pleased, I'm ecstatic" about the storms, said Randy Julander, snow survey supervisor in the Natural Resources Conservation Service office in Salt Lake City.

"Now the bad news: No, it didn't solve our particular problem."

Skimpy snowpack

In Utah's northern stretches, the most recent snowfall augmented the snowpack from 1 to 5 percent, "and that's all," Julander said.

What the storms did achieve is that they put enough moisture into the soil in many places so residents won't need to water lawns, gardens "or anything else" for a couple of weeks, he said. That will help enormously as Utahns leave more water in the reservoirs.