Southern Utah drought conditions see improvement, for now
Jun 12, 2025, 5:13 PM
FILE: A view of the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon National Park. (Deseret News)
(Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Although it’s been scorching hot in southern Utah for the last week or so, drought conditions have improved.
The latest readings from the U.S. Drought Monitor indicated that the overall amount of the state’s land that’s in a drought is still going up. However, the amount of land that is in severe or extreme drought, which is predominantly in southern Utah, has gone down.
The change had been attributed to storms in the southern part of the state over the last couple weeks.
“Really, over the last two weeks, the precipitation that they’ve received in far southern Utah, especially southwestern Utah, has been much above normal,” National Weather Service Hydrologist Glen Merrill said.
He doesn’t expect the improvement to last long.
“We’re going to see a lot of evaporative demand on the landscape here over the next week or two. And it looks like those conditions are going to continue through the end of June.”
The good news is that southern Utah could experience an above-normal monsoon season in July and August, which could help prevent the drought conditions from getting worse.
A good portion of the Wasatch Front is still not in a drought, but when asked about how confident he was in the prediction that it’ll change before the end of the summer:
“I’d say trends are leading in that direction.”
