Although May precipitation totals fell short of normal, the severity of Tooele County’s drought has lessened, according to a federal weather oversight group.
Last month, rainstorms brought a total 1.9 inches of precipitation to Tooele City, finishing just shy of the 1.91 inches normal for May, said Ned Bevan, a cooperative weather observer for the National Weather Service.
However, total precipitation levels for the 2015-16 water year are still above normal. At the end of May, Tooele City had received 14.43 inches since the beginning of the water year in October. Normal for this point in the water year is 14.1 inches.
In addition, Tooele County’s drought status has fallen to a D0, or “abnormally dry” conditions according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Previously, the drought monitor had classified the county’s drought as a D2 or “severe” drought. The county even hit class D3, “extreme” drought, last summer. The last time the drought in Tooele County was rated at D0 was in January 2012, according to drought monitor data.
The U.S. Drought Monitor is a partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The county’s improved drought status may be evident at local water sources. Much of the mountain snowpack the county received last winter has melted, feeding local streams and bodies of water. Snowpack around snow telemetry stations at Rocky Basin in Settlement Canyon, Mining Fork in the Stansbury Mountains, and Vernon Creek in the Sheeprock Mountains has all melted out, said Randy Julander, Utah Snow Survey supervisor.
Settlement Canyon Reservoir is currently at 51 feet and gaining, said Gary Bevan, president of Settlement Canyon Irrigation Company.
“It’s gaining every day, about 8, 9 inches a day,” he said. “We’re doing good. We’ve got a good runoff coming; it’s probably peaked unless Rocky Ridge Spring comes in. If that comes in, we’ll have more water. It hasn’t come in the last three or four years, but we’re hoping for it this year.”
The company currently has no restrictions on water use, Bevan added.
Grantsville Reservoir is also filling up with spring runoff, said Jake McArthur, watermaster of Grantsville Irrigation Company.
“We’re about eight feet from overflowing,” he said. “We’ve still got some (runoff) coming. On the 20th of May, we had about 12,000 gallons a minute coming in.”
Shareholders in the Grantsville company also face no extra restrictions on water. Agriculture farmers have been allotted two regular turns and residents get 250,000 gallons of water per share, McArthur said.
Over the next three months, the county may experience above-average temperatures. But at the same time, it could also receive above-average precipitation, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.
The county’s drought will likely remain but it could improve, according to the U.S. monthly drought outlook published by the prediction center.