To say Utah’s snowpack this year has been unusually heavy, and a blessing, would be an understatement.
Axios reports that Utah had broken its all time record for snowfall in a single season after an early April storm.
“Utah’s statewide ‘snow-water equivalent’ — the depth of the water that melted snow would produce — averaged 29.4 inches as of Tuesday morning [April 4], surpassing a previous record of 28.8, set in 1952.”
Records were also set for snowpack depth in “the mountains near Moab, with near-record snowfall near Bryce Canyon and Lake Powell [and r]ecord snow accumulation also is reported in Grantsville and sites in Cache and Rich counties, with near-record snow in Weber and southern Utah counties,” continued Axios.
ABC4 News, Salt Lake also commented on the record snowfall this winter, noting the majority of regions in the state exceeded 200 percent of normal snow depth, with one region in Utah’s south west corner reporting a snowpack of 323 percent of normal.
“This has been a year to remember,” Jordan Clayton, supervisor of the Utah Snow Survey, told ABC4 News. “This is just unbelievable.
“The snowpack this year has been off the charts, certainly since we put in the SNOTEL system in the early 1980s,” Clayton said. “We haven’t seen anything like this.”
This season’s heavy snow has helped bring Utah out of a severe drought that it had been experiencing, Laura Haskell, drought coordinator with the Utah Division of Water Resources, told ABC4 News.
“The first of the year, we had 56% of the state in the two worst categories of drought — ‘extreme’ and ‘exceptional,’” said Haskell, “We’re completely out of those two worst categories of drought and things just keep improving as the spring goes on and we continue to get more water.”
This is critical because 95 percent of Utah’s water supply comes from melted snow.