Precipitation in Utah was, on the whole, rather average for July — which may surprise you, depending on where you live.
In Salt Lake City, there was so much water on July 26 that houses in the Sugar House neighborhood flooded. The city on Wednesday opened a recovery center for home owners who experienced damage to basements and yards. It is at the Horizonte Instruction and Training Center (1234 S. Main Street in Salt Lake City). The center will remain open until Friday, with hours each day from noon to 8 p.m.
“Most people got up that morning and said, ‘Wow, another beautiful morning in paradise,’” said Randy Julander, Utah Snow Survey supervisor for the Natural Resources Conservation Service. “And a few got up and said, ‘Where did all this water come from?’”
That flooding was extremely localized and actually bucked the overall trend, where northern Utah remained drier than normal.
While in the southern part of the state, this year’s monsoon brought significant rain and some flash flooding.
When you average it together, you get a statewide precipitation total of 1.1 inches for July, according to the Utah Climate and Water Report from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
And that’s within normal ranges, said Julander. June is usually Utah’s driest month, with roughly an inch to an inch and a half of rainfall expected in most of northern Utah.
Beneath that average, though, lies a different picture. Southern Utah alone totaled 1.5 inches of rain last month, while the northern half got just .2 inches.
“It’s all about where you were in the state, whether at high elevation or in the south,” Julander said. “The rest of the state was hot, dry and miserable, like Utah usually is.”
Portions of central and northeastern Utah are experiencing mild drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, although those conditions are not expected to persist beyond summer.
The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center is currently projecting hotter, but also wetter weather than usual for most of the state through October.
Utah can typically expect to see more rainfall in the later summer months due to the monsoon, which draws warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico over the southwestern United States. But how far north it will travel is difficult to predict, Julander said. For most of July, he said, a high pressure system over the Wasatch Front prevented monsoonal moisture from reaching the area.
The good news, Julander said, is that reservoir storage is holding up well after last winter’s heavy snowpack. In fact, in some places the mountains above Utah still have snow on them.
“So we’re pretty happy at this point,” Julander said, “despite it being exceptionally hot and exceptionally dry in some locations.”