The Weather Service predicts monsoon storms off and on throughout the week and into the weekend, further padding rainfall totals after a relatively dry August.
Forecast rationing of Colorado River water that could have staggered Phoenix and Tucson eased with near-normal runoff on the Colorado River.
The Salt River this week was running at only about 37 percent of normal, but Tonto Creek as it flowed into Roosevelt stood at more than twice its normal flow, according to SRP’s daily water report this week.
Craigin Reservoir will likely play in Payson’s future – since the long-term projections suggest a looming regional water shortage in one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions.
Craigin water next year – which will boost the town’s long-term water supply from about 1,800 acre-feet annually from groundwater to a total of 4,800 acre feet with the reservoir water.
But for much of the rest of the state, this year’s break from years of drought has only temporarily ease conflicts about water.
The struggle between the state’s water planning agency and the elected board overseeing the multi-billion-dollar CAP comes in the shadow of a drop in water flowing in the Colorado River.
The first above-normal snowfall year in years barely averted water rationing on water coming from Lake Mead.
Before the spring runoff, water levels in the lake had nearly fallen to the level at which the federal Bureau of Reclamation would have started rationing water deliveries to Nevada and Arizona.
Even if nations hit the lower goals included in the Paris Accords, the southwest has a 60-70 percent chance of a mega-drought lasting 35 years or more before the end of this century, according to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies researchers.