Beset by Record Wet Cycle Since 1981 : Utah Braces for Storms From Cold Spot

There’s a cold spot in the Pacific Ocean, between the Midway and Aleutian islands, that’s bad news for anyone living 4,500 miles to the east.

“The Pacific Ocean out around the international dateline is basically colder than normal, and that’s where Utah’s storms will be coming from this winter,” said Bill Alder, the National Weather Service’s chief meteorologist for Utah.

“We still don’t know a lot about what Mother Nature has in store for us for more than about five days away, let alone for the next month or next six months.

“But we know when the winter storms are coming into Utah from that part of the Pacific Ocean they tend to be wetter and warmer than the historic average,” Alder said. “So, the way things are looking now, we’ll have our fourth straight wet year in Utah.”

7 Inches in 4 Days Since September, 1981, when Utah was hit by the rainstorm of the century, which brought more than 7 inches of precipitation to Salt Lake City during a four-day period, the state has been beset by a record wet cycle.

“We’ve had abnormally wet years for the last three years,” Alder said. “The wet scenario started back in the fall of ‘81, and it’s been unprecedented. You can go back and look at weather records since the Mormon pioneers arrived here in 1847, and we’ve had nothing this wet for this length of time.”

During the period, the state has been blessed with record winter snowpacks that pumped millions of dollars into Utah’s ski industry. And the snow has kept the mountains green throughout the summer, limiting the number of forest fires.

But last winter’s heaviest snowfall on record, which broke the previous mark set the year before, forced the State Wildlife Resources Division to raise more than $500,000 in cash and feed to prevent northern Utah deer and elk herds from starving.

Widespread Flooding And, in 1983, heavy spring runoff caused widespread flooding in Davis and Salt Lake counties and resulted in the Thistle mud slide, which dammed up the Spanish Fork River, covering the tiny town of Thistle with 150 feet of water.

The 1983 floods destroyed several dozen homes in Utah and forced Salt Lake City officials to turn a downtown street into a river using sandbags. An irrigation dam also broke, flooding farmland, and mud slides roared into several neighborhoods, damaging and destroying homes.

“It’s hard for me to say what will happen this year, but it looks like we’re having the same westerly flow pattern we experienced in 1981-82 and again last year,” Alder said.

He said the wet 1982-83 water year was caused by the El Nino phenomenon--a high pressure pattern in the South Pacific that pushes tropical storms far to the north, into Mexico and the United States.

This year, Alder said, Utah will be hit with storms from the western Pacific again. “That should mean another wet year,” he added.

Ahead of Average Thus far for the 1985 water year, which began Oct. 1, the service said its state headquarters at the Salt Lake International Airport is running more than 100% ahead of the 30-year precipitation average for the first 2 1/2 months of the year.

Alder said some persons claim that there is a 2,000-year wet cycle in Utah and that this is the high point in the cycle. Or they blame sun spots.

“But I don’t think too much of those theories. I think we really have to look at what’s happening in the Pacific Ocean because that’s where most of our weather is created,” he said.

Alder said the cold spot in the North Pacific “already has us off to a normal to above-normal snowpack in the mountains. Statewide, I’d say we’re 120%-140% of normal right now.”

And he said that, even if the rest of the 1984-85 winter is drier than usual, “we’ll still have the same flooding and mud slide problems next April and May because the soils are still saturated and the water table is still high.”

“With normal precipitation, there will be at least an 18-month or two-year lag before the soil stabilizes and spring mud slide problems are reduced.

More Mud Slides Seen “And it looks like this year will be one more wetter-than-normal year in the cycle. If I had to make a guess, however, I’d say this one will be the last one. But then we should have a series of normal precipitation years before we can expect any kind of a dry cycle, so that means more spring flooding and mud slides in 1985 and ‘86,” Alder said.

All that is not good news for facilities along the Great Salt Lake, which Alder said could reach its highest recorded level ever next summer.

The lake is at 4,208.4 feet above sea level now and, with just normal precipitation, can be expected to rise to 4,210.5 feet in June of 1985.

But, if Alder is correct and Utah stays on the wet side, the lake could rise to 4,211 feet in June. And, if this fall’s trend of precipitation at 130% to 140% of normal holds, it could reach its 1873 historic high of 4,211.6 feet, Alder said.

The lake already has caused millions of dollars of damage to facilities along its changing shores. The state is considering a multimillion-dollar diking project and massive pumping of water into Utah’s western desert.