Despite last week’s heavy rains, Cleburne remains under drought restrictions, city officials said on Thursday. The situation is much improved for now, something city officials hope persists into spring and summer.

“We’re still in Stage 2 restrictions,” Cleburne Assistant City Manager David Esquivel said. “We had planned to go to Stage 3 before the spring growing season. Right now it seems, going into spring and, hopefully the summer, that we’re in really good shape, that we can delay going into Stage 3 until further notice and hopefully not have to go there.

Esquivel updated council members in early January about the drought conditions and proposed an eventual move to Stage 3 restrictions for the city.

Heavy rainfall last week alleviated some of that problem.

“Lake Pat had been down about 5 1/2 feet,” Esquivel said. “After the rain, water was running over the spillway, and the lake is still full.”

Nonetheless, Cleburne, and the rest of the state, is hardly in the clear, Esquivel said.

“For now we remain in Stage 2 drought restrictions because one rain’s not going to dictate whether we’re in a drought or not,” Esquivel said. “Once we can establish that the cycle of our typical rainfall is back to normal, then we can say that we’re out of the drought.”

Even the forecast of more rain this week probably won’t be enough, Esquivel said.

“When you start looking at the information that’s out there from climatologists and they’re saying how the La Niña formation’s out there and that’s really dictating whether we’re in a drought or not. Now, they’ve never said that within the drought we weren’t going to get any rain.

“I think that [last week’s rain] was a godsend for us to get our lake filled up and we’re in really good shape going into the next year. But I think we’ve got kind of a reset and we still need to be cautious.”

Last year’s drought coupled with a record number of above 100-degree days played havoc throughout Cleburne and the state, a situation that contributed to numerous grass and wildfires throughout summer.

The situation prompted city officials in August to move from Stage 1, voluntary, drought restrictions to Stage 2, mandatory restrictions.

“The extreme drought conditions coupled with restrictions enacted by state water regulators have required the city to begin an immediate implementation of water use restrictions for all Cleburne residents,” Esquivel said at the time.

Stage 2 prohibited a number of non-essential water uses in the city such as draining and filling swimming pools, flushing city water systems and outdoor unattended watering of lawns between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Although Stage 3 restrictions are off the table for now, officials continue to monitor the situation, Esquivel said.

“The thing that concerns us is that a lot of experts are saying this is a long-term thing, not just to the end of this year,” Esquivel said. “That this could very well last several years. So we’re still looking at what options are available for us in order to plan for the worst-case scenario.”

One concern, before last week’s rain and even now, is this year’s winter. Water usage runs highest in the summer months, but city officials feared it might increase earlier on given this winter’s mild conditions.

“But no, it hasn’t,” Esquivel said. “We have had a very mild winter and that concerned us too because the temperatures we saw in January kind of indicate how hot summer is going to be. So that kind of scared us. But we haven’t seen that increase in [water] usage through January. It’s been pretty low. It’s a little bit lower than it usually is in January and I think because we left the [Stage 2] restrictions in place, and that’s helped.”

The hope, Esquivel said, is that rains continue and we don’t end up right back where we were last summer. A sentiment Cleburne Assistant Fire Chief Keith Scarbrough agrees with.

“You got to remember, last spring we started off nice and wet, had a lot of moisture here,” Scarbrough said. “But then the really big rains we usually get in April didn’t happen.”

The wildfire season usually starts in March or April in West Texas and, depending on weather conditions through the rest of spring and summer, spreads. Last year several Cleburne and Johnson County firefighters went to fight wildfires in other areas of Texas in spring, then came home to battle wildfires in the county through most of summer.

“We were in Snyder fighting a 120,000 acre wildfire last March and it was all nice and green in Cleburne at that time,” Scarbrough said.

Several times during the summer months, Scarbrough referred to the Keetch-Byram Drought Index, an index firefighters use, which is based on daily water balances, to determine the potential for forest fires. The index ranges from 0 to 800 with 0 indicating full moisture and 800 totally dry conditions. Johnson County spent much of the summer and fall above 700. The latest 14-day outlook places the county between 21 and 120.

“Johnson County’s in fairly decent shape right now with lots of moisture in the ground,” Scarbrough said. “The thing is, the forest and weather people still predict drought for the summer though so nothing’s changed in regards to fire service for Johnson County. We’re in better shape than we were this time last year, but not by much. If the rains keep coming we’ll be good. But if not, and if things go as predicted, we could easily be back where we were.”