Wednesday, May 9, 2012

How Dry Was Utah This Cool Season?

The National Climatic Data Center generates statewide average temperature and precipitation analyses by month and year for the United States.  The April 2012 data has just become available, which allows us to put this past cool season's (Nov-Apr) precipitation into long-term perspective.

Based on the statewide average, it was one of the driest cool seasons in the past 75 years.  The statewide average cool-season precipitation was only 4.12 inches, the third lowest since 1937.

Source: NCDC
This cool season was nothing, however, compared to 1976–1977 when we bottomed out at 1.87".  That year remains the true outlier in the instrumented record and the gold standard for drought years on a state-wide basis.

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