Salt River Runoff Peaks 1 Month Early As Arizona Enters Year 9 Of Drought

[hatrack]

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"Officially, spring arrives at 11:49 p.m. Friday, but temperatures soared to unseasonably high levels Wednesday with a nearly record 89 degrees at Sky Harbor International Airport, 14 degrees above normal. The heat wave is expected to intensify through the weekend, with highs nearing 95 by Sunday, the National Weather Service said.

Warm weather statewide has triggered an early snowmelt in the mountains. The Salt River is nearing its peak runoff levels almost a month ahead of schedule and could begin to subside in a week. The Verde River is past its peak for the season. "We are at the end of winter," said Larry Martinez, water-supply specialist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a federal agency. "Unless something huge happens, we probably have our water supply for the year."

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• The Salt and Verde rivers, key sources of drinking water for the Valley, will produce only about 42 percent of normal runoff by June, Salt River Project officials said Wednesday. SRP's six reservoirs are in better shape than they were last year at this time but are still less than half full.

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The start of spring doesn't mean an end to rain or even mountain snows. Phoenix normally receives about 0.90 of an inch of rain in March and about 0.26 of an inch in April. But the high-pressure system responsible for this week's heat wave suggests to some climate experts the end of the rainy season."

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[lastknowngood]

1. Be aware that the big corps are buying up the water resources

around the southwest soon you will be paying Enron prices not for oil or power but water, and you will have no choice.

[readmylips]

2. That Phoenix weather...

I sat back with my margarita in hand, my laptop, and enjoyed my garden that's beginning to come into full bloom. What a sight!

Governor Napolitano will kick anybody's a$$.

[MoonAndSun]

3. The developers are in a building frenzy out here and no one is able

to stop them tearing up this beautiful desert and destroying our natural desert life here.

My heart breaks for my beautiful state and I despise the repukes who refuse to do anything to save it from becoming a concrete land.

[phantom power]

4. they ought to...

double the price of water out here in AZ. Probably the rest of the southwest, for that matter.

They could phase it in. 7.1% per year, for ten years, or something.

[strategery blunder]

5. Isn't there usually a monsoon around July there?

I used to live in Prescott, then the Phoenix area. Then again, the weather everywhere seems to be going haywire so that source of precious rain might be gone by now.

[hatrack]

6. The pattern is still around, but it failed last year

This could be a normal monsoonal year, or they could get diddly-squat as in 2003.