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TWDB Report for Week of March 13, 2015

More good news this week as drought conditions continue to improve and statewide reservoir storage levels have increased 1.7 percentage points (for a total of 3.4 percentage points over the past four weeks). Unfortunately, not everyone has benefitted, with most reservoirs west of I-35 seeing little to no improvement.

Some notes from Doc Wentzel:

• The most recent map from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows conditions as of Tuesday, March 10th. Thanks to cool temperatures and precipitation in the past week, drought conditions continued to improve, particularly on the eastern edges of Central and North Central Texas. The pocket of Exceptional (D4) Drought in North-Central Texas continued to contract, resulting in a statewide decrease in this drought category of 0.4 percentage points. The area of the state free from drought impacts (Nothing) increased by almost 3½ percentage points. Moderate (D1) or worse drought was down almost 2 percentage points and is now 41 percent of the state.
• Thanks to continued beneficial precipitation in the last week (notably in North Central and East Texas), statewide conservation storage is up an additional 1.7 percentage points this week (after 0.9 and 0.6 percentage points in preceding weeks). In the last three weeks, conservation storage is up more than 1 million acre-feet (3.2 percentage points). Current storage is more than 3½ percentage points better than this time last year. The last time statewide reservoir storage was more than 68% was more than two years ago in October 2012.  Even so, storage for this time of year is about 15 percentage points below what is considered normal.
• As of Thursday, March 12th, conservation storage was up in 6, unchanged in 2, and down in 1 of 9 climate regions with reservoirs across the state. The Upper Coast had the largest gain, up 9.2 percentage points, but three other regions had gains of more than ½ a percentage point (South Central, North Central and East Texas).  The only region with a decrease was the Trans Pecos, down 1.1 percentage points.
• Conservation storage (as a percentage of capacity) increased in 12 of the 20 municipal reservoir systems that we track across the state, remained unchanged in 7, and decreased in 1. Fort Worth and Dallas had the largest gains, up 7 and 4.4 percentage points, respectively. Four additional systems had gains of more than ½ a percentage point (Corpus Christi, Temple-Killeen, Waco, and Nacogdoches).  The only declining system was Laredo, down 0.1 percentage points.
• The Monthly Drought Outlook from the National Weather Service for March remains the same as last week.  That outlook anticipates little change for Texas, either positive or negative, by the end of the month.   Next week, the Weather Service will release a revised Seasonal Drought Outlook for expected conditions through the end of June.

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