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SALT LAKE CITY — It's going to be a hot, dry weekend across the state of Utah, and that has state water officials quite concerned.
Normally this time of year, Utahns are looking at big water runoffs from the snowpack and rainstorms, but that's not what we've got. In fact, experts say the state hasn't been this dry in about a decade.
The problem is especially evident at Antelope Island State Park. That's where 4-year-old Kaleb Harper was Friday night, doing something he'd never done before: camping.
But because it's so dry on Antelope Island, Kaleb's first camping experience will be one without a campfire.
"It's the first thing we asked the lady when we came in, is if we can have a campfire, because we brought all the stuff — S'mores, stuff for hotdogs," Kaleb's mother, Katie Harper, said.
Everywhere you look on Antelope Island is dry, which is why it's one of the first places in Utah to ban fires this season.
"We just want to keep it as safe for the public and the animals and the environment as possible," said Bob Rosell, a park ranger on the island.
People get tired of hearing we're running short of water. The only problem is, it just keeps getting worse, and compounding itself over time.
–Randy Julander, National Resources Conservation Service
The Antelope Island restrictions are just the beginning this year. It's dry all across the state.
"People get tired of hearing we're running short of water. The only problem is, it just keeps getting worse, and compounding itself over time," said Randy Julander, snow survey supervisor with the National Resources Conservation Service.
Julander said reservoirs in southeastern Utah are extremely dry, and the same goes for Enterprise Reservoir, Gunnison Reservoir and the Weber Basin.
"Gunnison Reservoir is completely empty right now," Julander said. "And then you look at that in agricultural context — farmers really have to decide what they're going to do. You have no water to produce crops in that situation."
But what about the heavy rainstorms Utah had a couple of weeks ago? Julander said they only added about 1 percent to reservoir storage, but it's a good thing we had them.
"We could have easily decreased our reservoir storage 3 to 5 percent during that same period of time," Julander said.
Utah has seen low water totals like this before, back in the early 2000s. The problem now is there are a lot more people in Utah than there were back then.
So what does this all mean for the average Utahn? Conserve water as much as you can.
