It’s wet now, but drought’s still on

Some rivers are rushing. Some reservoirs are overflowing. Some lakes are swelling. Ground is soggy almost everywhere. If the Valley continues this winter to see more heavy rain creating these conditions, Arizona’s long drought will be . . . still a long way from over.

Since October, most areas of the state have seen twice the normal amount of precipitation for this time of year, said Tony Haffer, chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in the Valley.

"That does put a big dent in our short-term drought conditions. . . . but to reverse the effects of nine dry years is going to take at least two to three consecutive wet winters,’’ Haffer said Thursday.

Arizona has seen significantly less than normal precipitation in all but one year since 1995, so it’s going to take more than this exceedingly rainy, snowy autumn and winter to end the drought, state climatologist Andrew Ellis said.

"We can’t get starry-eyed over what we’ve seen in the past four months. . . We’re still far from being out of the woods in terms of long-term drought,’’ said Ellis, who also directs Arizona State University’s Office of Climatology.

But the last few months have raised hopes that this could be the beginning of the end of this drought cycle.

The weather service’s forecast is for higher than normal precipitation through the next two months.

It won’t be sufficient for the deep soaking necessary to get moisture down into the lower soil levels where it was in predrought years, Haffer said.

It will be enough to bring up waters in rivers, ponds, lakes and reservoirs and green up the landscape at least until summertime, and to allow water utilities to increase their backup supplies, he said. However, consistent long-term moisture is needed to replenish underground aquifers that supply groundwater.

How much drought relief the current wet season brings before it ends will depend on not just how much rain and snow falls, but where.

So far, most has occurred in the northwest part of the state, which feeds into the Valley through the Verde River watershed. It’s led to overflows of the Horseshoe and Bartlett reservoirs, necessitating that the Salt River Project release and lose more than 200,000 acre-feet of water from the Verde. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, roughly enough for a family of four for a year.

What’s needed is more rain and snow in northeastern Arizona — particularly in the White Mountain and Mogollon Rim country. Flows from those areas feed into the Salt River watershed, which the Valley depends on for about 70 percent of its water supply.

Roosevelt Lake, where that water is stored, has risen from 30 percent of its capacity at this time last year to 41 percent as of Thursday. But that’s only about two-thirds of the amount of water that typically was in Roosevelt in winter months in the years before the drought.

"My fear is that we go right back into dry weather’’ in spring and summer, with decreasing flows in the Salt River watershed, said Charlie Ester, SRP’s manager of water operations.

"This may go down as a wet winter in the middle of a long drought cycle . . . If the rains were to quit now, there wouldn’t be a big impact’’ on long-term water-supply conditions, Ester said.

"The public perception right now is that water is abundant, but our reservoirs are so small" relative to the amount of water the Valley uses, he said.

SRP has decided to continue for a third straight year a one-third reduction of water allocations to Valley municipalities and its other customers because of continuing drought conditions, said spokesman Scott Harelson.

The ideal situation would be for rains and snowfalls to continue steadily in the next few months rather than have a few intense but short snowstorms and rainstorms, Ellis said.

Should big storms be followed by dry, warm spells, then snowpacks from northern Arizona’s high country will melt rapidly and send more heavy flows rushing down watersheds. That would threaten dams and reservoirs, forcing SRP to release and lose much of the water. "Our worry is that right now we have too much of good thing. . . . that the snowpack has built up a little too early. We could lose a lot of (the water from) that snowpack if there’s a lot more runoff than the reservoirs can hold,’’ Ellis said.

More moderate precipitation in parts of Utah and Colorado that feed into the Colorado River and the Central Arizona Project canals is brightening the outlook in much of the Arizona.

The Central Arizona Water Conservation District, which manages the CAP, is able to store much of that water for the future because winter rains here are leading to less demand for CAP water from the major agricultural users and many municipalities that are the district’s customers, said spokesman Bob Barrett.

The replenished supplies will figure into a viable longterm drought management plan that the district is required to submit to the U.S. Department of the Interior by April, Barrett said.

The more frequent rains and snowfall in the West in recent months are being attributed to what some climatologist are describing as a weak El Niño system.

It happens when surface waters in equatorial areas of the Pacific Ocean warm up more than normal, causing heavier accumulations of moisture to rise into the atmosphere.

The moisture is gathered up by the winter winds that typically blow into the West from the Pacific, and is making the season’s rains and snows more forceful, Haffer said.