National Weather Service hydrologist says May was wet, but may not be enough

<p id=”yui_3_16_0_1_1432965647256_2100″ style=”margin-bottom: 0in;”>In what could be called ‘Miracle May’, KVNU’s Weather Reporting Station picked up record moisture for the month of May – 5.25 inches. But according to National Weather Service senior hydrologist Brian McInerney, it may not put a big dent in the drought.</p><p style=”margin-bottom: 0in;”>“The Miracle May, if you want to term it that way, was quite nice. It was cool, it was wet…and it was just a nice change from the heat and the lack of storms that we’ve had for so long.”</p><p style=”margin-bottom: 0in;”>McInerney said when you look at May’s precipitation amount, although impressive, it was just one month that had above normal precipitation. The only other month recently that even came close was December with near normal precipitation.</p><p id=”yui_3_16_0_1_1432965647256_2101″ style=”margin-bottom: 0in;”>On KVNU’s For the People program on Friday, McInerney said the May precipitation only raised the run-off projections for the Logan River from 49 percent of normal to 61 percent. This being the fourth year-in-a-row of below normal run-off he said it really depends on what the coming months bring.</p><p id=”yui_3_16_0_1_1432965647256_2113″ style=”margin-bottom: 0in;”>“Hopefully it will be something what we saw last year where July, August, September were very, very wet. The monsoon kicked in, in high gear. And what happened was people didn’t use stored water in reservoirs. They used rain-water for their irrigation of their landscaping and farmers did the same.”</p><p id=”yui_3_16_0_1_1432965647256_2114″ style=”margin-bottom: 0in;”>Because of that, right now the reservoirs are in better shape than last year despite another low run-off year. Because of climate change, though, McInerney said we could be looking at a future of more mountainous winter rains than moisture-rich snowpacks with less overall water for the state.</p>

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!