In Death Valley, the heat brought even the roadrunners to a stop. They stood arched to the sky with their beaks wide open, as if in a stupor, or indignant at what the sun was up to. The landscape blurred and undulated. People moved as if they were walking through glue. When a light breeze came in the afternoon, it stung their faces so badly they had to turn away from it. Water mains burst in the baking dirt, while the “cold” tap water came out of faucets the temperature of a Jacuzzi.

Arizona risks losing water rights because of a lingering, nearly two-decade long drought in the Colorado River that could restrict water use ranging from farmers’ crops to how many households receive water, state water experts say. Calcium rings around Lake Mead tell the story of declining water levels, with cream markings permanently decorating the canyon walls that shows high levels that haven’t been seen since 1983. Current surface elevation is at 1,081 feet. If it drops another six feet, water to Arizona will likely be cut, according to an Arizona budget document.

Every spring firefighters throughout the West approach the summer season with a proverbial prediction: If the winter was dry, all those parched trees will burn like torches; if it was a wet winter, all those new grasses will fuel quick fire starts and hot, runaway flames. After a winter that left record piles of snow in the mountains and drenched most of California’s valleys, it’s no surprise that it is grass fires that are fueling a fast start to the state’s 2017 fire season. More than 16,000 acres had burned by June 3 in 1,229 blazes, most of them in central and southern California.

For decades, the way to decide who gets how much water from the Colorado River involved big, protracted fights in Congress and the courts. Now, the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada are voluntarily working on a drought contingency plan to cut the water each state gets from Lake Mead once a shortage is declared. California would agree for the first time to take cuts, which is definitely better than the current agreement that forces Arizona to take the bulk of the cuts while California escapes with none. Arizona and Nevada also would agree to take more cuts, propping up Lake Mead levels in hopes of avoiding more drastic cuts later on.

Winter is horning in on summer in the California mountains, where a stubborn blanket of snow is preventing several high-country camps from opening just as swarms of seasonal sojourners are itching to head for the hills. Summer officially begins Wednesday, but the historic storms that rolled through this winter deposited so much snow in the Sierra, Cascade and Siskiyou ranges that roads are still being plowed, tent sites are still being dug out and damage is still being assessed.