2020 has certainly been a tough year.  COVID-19, an earthquake at the marina, horrible spring precipitation, silting, low lake levels, many boats stuck in the marina and budget constraints brought on by COVID-19.

We are watching the 2020-2021 water year very closely.  National Weather Service comes out with their long-range forecast at the end of each month.  For the last two months the NWS forecast for this winter is the same . . . they don’t know if the GSL drainage is going to be wet or dry this winter.  They give us an equal chance for both.  They feel pretty confident that Utah will be much drier than normal south of us and much wetter than normal just to the north of us.  We are in the uncertain zone between these two zones.  A link to their long-term forecasts can be found here

Now for the tough reality.  We can’t afford to have a drier-than-normal winter.  Nor can we afford to have a normal winter snowpack.  We MUST have above normal precipitation to maintain a boating season for fixed keel boats.  Much of the moisture and snowpack we receive this winter will be held in the mountain reservoirs to replete their lake levels. As an example here are the current percentages of lake levels in the GSL Drainage area:

Pineview: 40%

Causey: 36%

Echo: 19%

East Canyon: 57%

Rockport: 43%

Deer Creek: 60%

Jordanelle (our bright spot): 73%

I’m not trying to sound the alarm yet.  According to water watch experts we can afford to have a dry October and even a dry November.  But we can’t lose December through April.  Those are our critical months.  Right now our snowpack, surprisingly, is 158% today with the Provo drainage being at 256%.

Great Salt Lake gets 50% of its water from direct precipitation.  The other 50% comes from spring runoff.  Of that 50%, 20% comes from the Jordan River. 20% comes from the Weber/Ogden rivers.  And 60% comes from the Bear River drainage.  So we will be watching the Bear River snowpack (NW Uinta Mountains) very closely.  Today that snowpack is 126%.  If we can maintain 125% on the Bear and 125% for the whole drainage we should be ok for next year.  If we don’t we could be in serious trouble.  Right now NOAA has all of Utah in the “Drought Persists” forecast through January 2021. 

This last snowpack season we started out gangbusters in October only to go dry in November.  December through February were showing good numbers . . . Until COVID-19 and the Earthquake hit.  Right after that we had some of the driest months on record.  We lost March, April and May.

So here is the reason for this email.  I am watching the situation VERY closely this winter.  If we end up having our snowpack drainage in the dry zone we may be back where we were five years ago and having to plan on pulling most, if not all, the boats from the marina again.  I certainly hope this doesn’t happen.  But I feel I must at least explain where we are at this moment and what we need to see for a recovery.  “Hope” is the key word now.

National Weather Service is updating their long-term forecasts constantly.  They are published at the end of each month.  I have watched their forecasts closely for nearly 20 years now.  And they are very often wrong.  Predicting weather is not easy.  There is some hope in other models. And some grim news.  One bit of grim news is that very long term forecasters feel that we are heading for another dust bowl in the next several years as the West will see persistent droughts.  Other forecast models indicate we may be going into a three to six year wet cycle.

We can only watch and hope.