The past year was historically dry for communities across Utah. That left cities, rivers and farms in a tough spot.
“It was a horrible year,” said Washington County Water Conservancy District General Manager Zach Renstrom. “It was just an extraordinary drought.”
St. George had its seventh driest water year according to historical records that date back to 1893. The city’s precipitation total for the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30 was 4.52 inches — less than half of its historical average from 1991-2020 and less than a third of what it got in 2023.
“Fortunately, we were able to have water stored over from previous years that we could carry into this year to make sure that we had safe drinking water,” Renstrom said.
The Salt Lake City airport, Kanab and Monticello also saw precipitation totals that ranked among their 10 driest years on record. Capitol Reef National Park got just 2.54 inches, making it the park’s driest water year since 1938.
Even northern Utah watersheds that fared best over the past year ended up below average, said National Weather Service meteorologist Sam Webber, with the luckiest basins maxing out around 85% of their normal rain and snow totals. The quiet monsoon season especially hurt southern Utah, he said, where some low-elevation deserts got less than half their average precipitation.
While early October storms in Salt Lake started the city’s new water year off on the right foot, their impact is limited.
“It gives the illusion that everyone got it, because everyone's talking about it,” Webber said, but people “outside of the Wasatch Front didn't get any rain, and that's a huge area.”
That was even true for the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City, he said.
“In the areas where it matters most, especially when we start thinking of reservoir storage, it just didn't see as much of that precipitation.”
And it takes more than one storm to erase months of dry weather. Every inch of Utah has been in some form of drought since July. Some areas, including St. George and Moab, have been experiencing extreme levels of drought for more than a month.
“Individual storms do matter,” Webber said. “But we need individual storms to maintain themselves, to keep on going, especially across the entirety of the area.”
The early October rain in Salt Lake did have good timing, though. Fall precipitation is more likely to improve drought conditions than summer rain, he said, because the season’s cooler temperatures steal less water through evaporation.
Plus, he said the remnants of Hurricane Priscilla in the Pacific Ocean could bring another wave of rain to Utah in mid-October.
The long-term forecast for the winter, however, points to below-average precipitation for the southern part of the state. That means Washington County residents will need to keep doing their part to conserve, Renstrom said.
Fall is the time of year when the county sees the most water waste, he said, because people set their lawn sprinkler schedules for the summer and forget to adjust them to run less frequently as temperatures drop.
“Right now, we're living off storage,” Renstrom said. “So if somebody saves a gallon of water today, we literally carry that water into next summer.”
