Opinion: Are the Rains Helping Lake Mead? What the Question Says About Our Water Outlook

You can understand our optimism. It hadn’t rained in Phoenix for four months. Other parts of the West were hot and dry. Then came the big one: Hurricane Hilary. While rainfall totals were disappointing in Phoenix, the storm did dump quite a few inches on California and Nevada. Areas near Lake Mead got pelted, leading a bunch of folks to presume that the nation’s largest water reservoir would get a decent boost from the rainfall. But that’s not how it works.