No, it’s not normally like this. Rain, wind and snow are often common in Utah during this month. Just not this year.

If there is anyone in Utah who doesn’t know that it has been a dry winter this year, I’m not sure where they’ve been hiding. It would take a lot of effort to ignore that reality.

While not ideal, it certainly isn’t unusual in a high desert area like our state. Droughts are simply part of life.

This one comes at a particularly difficult time as there is increasing concern about the status of the Great Salt Lake, which continues to lose more water to evaporation than it gains in runoff. A nice wet year would’ve helped us move the needle in the right direction.

Instead, I see all the dire news about the disappointing snowpack and the expected diminished runoff. There are concerns, of course, about reservoir levels and lake levels for the smaller lakes, as well as the big lakes in Utah.

Sometimes it seems like we should feel guilty about enjoy these record-breaking warm March temperatures, like it’s bad to savor the sunshine and flowers because of the water challenges.

But, in the grand scheme of things, there really isn’t all that much that any of us can do as individuals.

I think it is great to have people of faith turn to prayer as well as considering engineering and technological possibilities. But something weather patterns are global phenomenon and we still struggle at times to predict what will happen, let alone have much control of it.

So since I can’t control whether Mother Nature will be sending big storms filled with rain and snow, I’m just going to focus on doing my part.

Because we can probably all take our stewardship responsibilities seriously. If everyone did, we would use our resources much more responsibly.

We don’t actually lose water, since it just changes forms. Much of it seeps into the groundwater supply and aquifers, which are tapped by wells in the state. The rest evaporates into the air to be used somewhere else in the nation.

Evaporation is the toughest challenge, since it is nearly universal and means that water that could be in Utah will end up in Colorado or Kansas or back east.

I don’t have brilliant answers to fix the concerns with the Great Salt Lake, concerns that are very valid.

But yhe reality is that the biggest enemy of the Great Salt Lake is … the Great Salt Lake.

Due to the geography and lake composition, the Utah Museum of Natural History says the “an average of

about 2.9 million acre feet of water evaporates from the lake annually.” That’s enough water to more thatn 23.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

That’s a lot of water disappearing into the air. Some of it comes down again in Utah but much of it heads east as it is pushed along by the jet stream.

But while my lawn watering habits may not solve the problems, if we all do better in our little corners of the state it will add up and help.

So I’m going to limit my irrigation and only water at night. I’ll run my sprinklers on rotation so the water has time to soak in. I’ll check my sprinklers to make sure they are water the plants that need to be watered and not just watering concrete.

Those are doable little things that I invite everyone to do simply to be better stewards of the water we have.

But I also invite you to enjoy the nice weather when it is here. Storms will come and there will be flooding and fires in years to come.

So take a walk. Feel the sunshine. Smell the flowers and blossoms.

Enjoy and protect what you have.

Jared Lloyd is the managing editor of the Daily Herald and can be reached at jlloyd@heraldextra.com.