Although spring storms brought the neighbor’s tree through my roof (let’s call it “indoor rainwater harvesting”…), it’s really good to see continued improvements in reservoir and drought conditions for much of the state. Reservoirs in the Dallas area are now more than 94 percent full (!!!), up from about 65% in mid-February. Nonetheless, improvements in reservoir storage in the western part of the state continue to be small or non-existent.
A few notes from Dr. Wentzel:
· The most recent map from the U.S. Drought Monitor continues to show significant improvement across the state. In the last week, large areas in the Panhandle, north central, and central Texas showed improvement. Severe (D2), Extreme (D3) and Exceptional (D4) Drought were down more than 2, 3, and ½ percentage points, respectively. The area of Moderate (D1) or worse drought is down almost 4 percentage points to less than 31 percent of the state, the lowest that value has been since 2010.
· Statewide reservoir conservation storage was up more than 600,000 acre-feet (or 2 percentage points) in the last week. That’s the best one week improvement since March of 2012 and extends to 10 straight weeks our current run of improvements in statewide reservoir conditions. Current storage is more than 9 percentage points better than this time last year but still about 10 percentage points below what is considered normal for this time of year.
· As of Thursday, April 30th, conservation storage was up in 6, unchanged in 2, and down in 1 of 9 climate regions with reservoirs across the state. The only decrease this week was in the Trans Pecos region, down 1.5 percentage points. The North Central region had the largest increase, up a whopping 5.3 percentage points. Two additional regions (South and Low Rolling Plains) had increases of more than ½ a percentage point.
· Conservation storage (as a percentage of capacity) increased in 9 of the 20 municipal reservoir systems that we track across the state, remained unchanged in 6, and decreased in 5. Dallas had the largest gain, up 8 percentage points. Four other systems (Wichita Falls, Fort Worth, Temple- Killeen, and Corpus Christi) were up at least ½ a percentage point. All other changes were 0.2 percentage points or less.
· The National Weather Service has released their Monthly Drought Outlook for conditions through the end of May. It brings good news to Texas, anticipating improvement in all areas of the state impacted by drought and even removal of drought in many of those areas. No new areas of drought are expected to develop.
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