The snowstorm that hit on the late afternoon of Christmas Day was a gift in more ways than one.
It gave Tooele Valley a welcomed layer of snow for Christmas and perhaps signaled a hopeful change to a year-long weather pattern of few storms and hyper dry conditions that have made drought the Transcript Bulletin’s 6th top story of the year.
Christmas Day’s storm that continued into Wednesday morning dropped nearly 6 inches of snow and added .42 of an inch of water to the area’s lagging precipitation total, according to Ned Bevan, National Weather Service observer in Tooele City.
The 2018-19 water year, which began three months ago on Oct. 1, stood at 3.96 inches after Christmas Day’s storm, Bevan said. More than half that amount fell during October as remnants of Tropical Storm Rosa reached deep into Utah.
Combined normal moisture total for October, November and December is 4.98 inches while combined normal snowfall total is 30.8 inches. But since Oct. 1, only 21.5 inches of snow has been recorded at Bevan’s station.
When the 2017-18 water year ended on Sept. 30 the total precipitation mark reached 10.49 inches. Normal precipitation by Sept. 30, of each year in Tooele City is 18.49 inches. Causing that 8-inch deficit was last winter’s poor snowfall, followed by a hyperdry summer.
According to Bevan, his NWS reporting station received only 28.3 inches of snowfall from Oct. 1, 2017 to Sept. 30, 2018. Normal total snowfall is 84.4 inches. And what was happening on the valley floor in terms of low snowfall was occurring as well in the Oquirrh and Stansbury Mountains.
From January through April, SnoTel sites — which measure the amount of water content in snowpack — at Rocky Basin in the Oquirrh Mountains and Mining Fork in the Stansbury Mountains, teetered between 45 and 55 percent of normal. The SnoTel site at Vernon Creek faired much worse.
When May arrived, snowpack at those sites quickly disappeared. By June 1, the Utah Climate and Water Report by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, showed Settlement Canyon Reservoir at 72-percent capacity and Grantsville Reservoir at 84-percent capacity.
With Settlement Canyon Reservoir not at capacity at the start of summer, the irrigation company initiated water restrictions. At Grantsville Reservoir, farmers were allotted two regular turns instead of normally five-to-six turns, while residential users were allotted only 150,000 gallons. The previous year they were allotted 250,000 gallons.
Water restrictions were further intensified as water user demand mounted. That demand was caused by a summer that was literally dry as dust. Normal precipitation from June through September is 4.39 inches. But last summer, zero rainfall was recorded in June and September, with only .76 of an inch measured during July and August.
With so much demand on irrigation water because of little to no rain, Settlement Canyon Irrigation Company shut down in early September — over a month early. In August, Grantsville Irrigation Company shareholders were warned via email to check their meters and not to exceed their allotment — or face possible fines up to $1,000.
The year’s below normal precipitation totals both in the mountains and valleys have taken a toll on the county’s soil profiles. Throughout the summer, the National Weather Service U.S. Drought Monitor map showed Tooele County under both Moderate Drought (D1) and Severe Drought (D2) status. D0 means abnormally dry, D3 extreme drought and D4 exceptional drought.
But by Sept. 30, the entire county was listed as Severe Drought (D2). The latest map released on Dec. 20 shows the county still in severe drought.
On Oct. 15, Gov. Gary Herbert issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency due to drought across the state. The declaration was made to draw attention to the drought problem and to allow drought impacted communities and agriculture to begin accessing state or federal resources for relief.