Normally, in March, I give my predictions for the water year. Well this year is being a tough one to do that. And that is very good news. We are breaking water watch models right now. We have impressive snowpack numbers. Not record snowpack by any means but impressive. The Bear River snowpack numbers have been a bit of a disappointment though. Yet I mean that in relative numbers. We are only at 115% snowpack for the Bear River basin which gives us 60% of our snowpack runoff. But the good news on the Bear River basin is that their reservoirs are at near saturation. The Weber/Ogden basin and the Prover River basin are at very high numbers. They, collectively, give us 40% of our runoff. The ponds right near Great Salt Lake are at saturation and are actually flooding over in some spots. I have never seen that happen before. That is an indication of ground water saturation. So here is my prediction based on 21 years of experience grinding the numbers on the lake level, ground water saturation and snowpack. Drum roll! I have no Idea how much we will come up this year. But what I can tell you is that we had a plan to pull all the boats from the marina and put them back in the parking lot this summer. THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN NOW. At minimum we will have a net-neutral year. That means, at minimum, we will end up back this fall at the same depths we were at last fall. Based on the numbers I am seeing right now and the forecasts coming from NWS that is a Worst Case Scenario. It is more likely that we will have a net-positive year on lake level. National Weather Service came out a week ago with their predictions for precipitation this spring, summer and fall. All seasons are showing much-wetter-than normal precipitation. This does not make for the best sailing conditions so get out on the water on those nice days as they come up. The other good news is that the mouth of the marina did not silt in this winter. We are looking at current depths near 6 feet at the mouth of the marina. Some lake level news by the numbers: During March the lake usually comes up an average of 0.4 feet. We came up 0.6 feet. April we usually come up 0.2 feet. Well we already did that. And we have a large, very wet storm barreling down on us with more storms on the way. May we usually come up just 0.06 feet. I can guarantee that we will exceed that number. If all other numbers hold steady at average we will have a net neutral year. So you can see it is more likely that we will have a net positive lake level year. GET OUT AND SAIL! Dave Shearer Harbor Master Great Salt Lake State Marina 801-250-1898 [DNR Parks Logo]
