How's the drought looking where you are?

[RosieTR]

Ours looks like a bad movie remake. At least a couple of communities are starting water restrictions on Monday, April 1, including Denver. The snowpack (our ONLY source of meaningful water) is at 60-70% normal after 2012 that was staggeringly below normal esp for the spring. At least this year we've had moisture in March, which is historically one of our wettest months. Last year the big cities that sit along the mountains, called the Front Range (including Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins) got 0 precip in March and wildfire season started then, too, with the North Fork Fire. This year we've already started wildfire season, which sort of never really ended though has had lulls here and there. Friends of mine who work for fire departments and natural resource or water management departments are not optimistic. Sigh. On the bright side, our front yard has not been grass for the last 10 years, after the drought of 2002. People were *literally* painting their lawns green, and I think at least one small town totally ran out of water and residents had to take sponge baths and drink bottled water shipped in.
Stupidly, water rights in Colorado prohibit legally saving water: either grey water use or rainwater container collection. Thus I have been working on passive rainwater collection (ie slowing). I plan to do more work this weekend with mulching and planting the front yard. The backyard is beyond my layperson abilities so we will need some consulting: it's very sloped and has mature trees at the crest of the hill. At least I don't really care if the sloped part is brown, and maybe for kicks I'll get some clover seed to throw down. Also I plan to use small bits of grey water that are simple and in the (ha ha) grey area: putting post-lettuce wash water on the rhubarbs, for example.
We'll see what the spring and summer bring, though snow is the best. lots of rain, especially quickly, could actually cause worse damage than low rainfall because then there may be erosion and flooding where stuff burned last year. Sigh again.

[iris lilies]

Things are good here. We just, two weeks ago, recovered the groundwater from last year's drought and we are at normal.

We had a pleasingly cold winter and that fun snowfall a few days ago, ten inches! Now it nearly all gone.

So far, this is not an early spring.

Back to normal weather. SPring should be pretty.

[Tradd]

The snow here has really helped.

[Zoebird]

still on-going. we are on water restrictions.

[Wildflower]

We've had 28 inches of snow in the past 2 weeks alone, so we are at least temporarily out of the drought. But local weather guy says if we go without any moisture for more than 2 weeks we'll be right back where we were...

It seems the last few years we're either flooding for months or desert dry. Gardening has been a challenge to say the least...

[Rogar]

I am in the Denver area/front range, too. I have noticed that our water board is continuing to propose more reservoirs and storage expansions which is usually a bad deal for fish and wildlife habitat. I was involved a little in one of the proposed projects in an especially sensitive natural area. I think urban dwellers in the arid west just have face up to the fact that traditional lush landscaping just isn't in the picture, but probably the worse parts of it are the fires and effects on farmers and ranchers.

[CathyA]

We have lucked out. Have had alot of snow and rain after last Fall. But.....who knows what will be in store for us. The weather is very inconsistent.

[The Storyteller]

Bad enough we are selling off almost all of our birds and ceasing production until the drought is over.

Which is ironic, since sustainable agriculture requires much less water than industrial ag.

[iris lily]

Bad enough we are selling off almost all of our birds and ceasing production until the drought is over.

Which is ironic, since sustainable agriculture requires much less water than industrial ag.

OMG!!!! I'm sorry to hear this.

[pinkytoe]

Ours is predicted to be the worst in recorded history - eclipsing the drought here of the early 1950s. We are currently allowed to water once a week but that will probably be pulled back to every two weeks or not at all. The irony is that people are still worried about their d--- lawns. My elderly neighbors on both sides both have their auto sprinklers set to go off in the middle of the nights so I am about ready to turn them in. I am currently saving our shower water in buckets to keep my new xeriscape garden alive. Honestly, I have forgotten what rain looks and smells like.