When missionaries, settlers and pioneers pushed West, the mountains, valleys, rivers and peaks became subject to their sentiments.
Names given by Native American tribes were forgotten or never learned, and trying experiences were distilled into lamenting designations. Such was Disappointment Creek.
Looking at the West’s most recent annual water reports is like looking at a rap sheet. The redundant bad years string together — 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022.
This season’s precipitation snuck in under many scientists’ radars.
When the reservoirs filled and allocations were guaranteed, the memory that just one year ago, Utah — one of the states with the largest snowpacks in recorded American history — was 80 percent covered in extreme or significant drought, faded.
But was it enough?