Ina Kivijärvi walks in the rain in downtown Salt Lake City on Friday, July 15, 2022. Photo credit: Laura Seitz/Deseret News.
SALT LAKE CITY — Despite last week’s pop-up storms, the drought in Utah has not improved much. A local meteorologist said it’ll take more snow in the coming winters to get us out of this, not occasional storms.
Monica Traphagan, the lead meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City office, said the recent rain is appreciated but unfortunately, these storms don’t do a whole lot to combat the drought.
“Being in a wetter than normal pattern for a week or two, is great — and every little bit of that helps — but it takes a lot more than that,” she said.
Traphagan said the big thing to remember is that this drought was years in the making and the lack of snow in recent years has played a big part.
“The past couple of winters we’ve had have been significantly below average with regard to snow. That has significant implications on our water supply,” she said.
Traphagan said that getting out of this drought is going to be based on how we do in the long-term.
“What got us into this drought in the first place is a long period of time where we had significantly below average precipitation. And to get out of that we have to have significantly above average precipitation for a long period of time,” she said.