Is City Of Amarillo About To Enact The Drought Contingency Plan?

The weather the last couple of weeks in Amarillo has been hot and dry. That is of course if you take out the wild and crazy thunderstorm we received on Sunday afternoon.

Temperatures were consistently over 100 degrees, and we were doing everything we could to stay cool and hydrated.

It wasn't just that we were doing. We were using a bit more water than usual. Things such as watering the grass maybe a bit more than usual so it didn't burn up on us. Using more to refill a pool that may have lost some water.

One thing we definitely didn't do was conserve water during that stretch of time, and according to the NOAA, we are in a bit of a moderate drought in the Texas Panhandle.

When we are in that drought stage, the city asks us to conserve and limit our water usage, and for good reason obviously. However, the last couple of weeks I can assure you we didn't do that.

We officially went over the city's daily water consumption, but we received some good news from the city. It doesn't appear that we will have to implement the Drought Contingency Plan.

City officials mentioned we have the ability to produce a lot of water above the 70-80 million gallon per day amount, they just don't HAVE to. These contingency plans are in place when we get little to no rainfall, much like we have recently.

There are five different stages to the plan, and stage one only kicks in when the reservoir is at 60% or lower capacity. According to city officials, the reservoir is currently hovering around 71%.

The City of Canyon has also mentioned they don't believe they'll reach contingency plan levels either, but as the weather stays hot and we want to utilize the water, we have to continue to be mindful. Enacting the contingency plan in either city is not ideal.