Utah is now completely out of drought status
Jul 5, 2024, 3:03 PM | Updated: 3:17 pm
People walk on the beach of the Great Salt Lake in Salt Lake City on Friday, March 17, 2023. One of the world’s largest hypersaline lakes, the Great Salt Lake is on the verge of collapse due to climate change, drought and population pressures that have reduced inflows and shrunk the lake by more than two-thirds. (Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY — For the first time in five years, the entire state of Utah is out of a drought status.
The latest map from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows no part of the state being in drought status, though about 25% is still considered abnormally dry.
“Portions of the state, mainly along that eastern and southern border, are abnormally dry,” KSL Meteorologist Matt Johnson said. “But basically, we are completely out of a drought.”
Johnson says this is because Utah’s most recent wet winters have been crucial in restoring the state’s water supply.
“We’ve had two really good winters, one of them record-setting, as far as snow-water equivalent. So this has been huge for getting us on the right path.”
However, Johnson said whether we stay out of drought conditions will be contingent on how hot it gets this summer, and how much rain Utah gets when monsoon season hits.
“If we’re not in a drought, now we are planning for the next,” Johnson said, quoting a saying from The Utah Department of Natural Resources. “That just kind of comes with the territory…we are one of the top three driest on average so it’s not foreign territory for us to have dry weather.”
