Lake Powell’s water levels are on the cusp of dropping below a critical benchmark and federal officials don’t expect the reservoir’s supply to be replenished until May.
As of Thursday, the lake’s levels were hovering inches above 3,525 feet, which is the threshold local officials set as the “target elevation” while drafting the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan Agreements.
3,490 feet is the minimum elevation at which the generators in Lake Powell can run, according to Gene Shawcroft, the general manager for the Central Water Conservancy District and Utah’s Colorado River Commissioner.
He says 3,525 feet was the buffer level, water leaders decided on, to move forward with a plan after witnessing record drought conditions.
High in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming, under thin air and bluebird skies, the Colorado River Basin is slowly replenishing its savings account. Craggy peaks become smooth walls of white, and snow piles up against conifer trunks, covering even the deepest, darkest corners of the forest in a glimmering blanket.
Snow that accumulates on the western slope of the Rockies eventually becomes water in the Colorado River. Some of it will flow as far south as Mexico, running through kitchen faucets in cities and suburbs along the way, or watering crops that keep America fed.
The water level in Lake Powell was at a record low when rain and snow began to fall across the Colorado River Basin in October, soaking dry soils ahead of the winter season.
Water managers, who hoped the trend would build into an above-average snow year that might delay a looming water crisis in the Southwest, watched the snowpack drop to near zero in November. Then, after a massive storm cycle brought six feet of snow to parts of the Rockies around the New Year, they again breathed a sigh of relief.
The water level in Lake Powell was at a record low when rain and snow began to fall across the Colorado River Basin in October, soaking dry soils ahead of the winter season.
Water managers, who hoped the trend would build into an above-average snow year that might delay a looming water crisis in the Southwest, watched the snowpack drop to near zero in November. Then, after a massive storm cycle brought six feet of snow to parts of the Rockies around the New Year, they again breathed a sigh of relief.
Between the Winter Olympics and our dry January, I’ve been thinking a lot about snow over the last few weeks. Last month, Reno saw no measurable precipitation for the first time since such records were kept. The dry streak has continued past January. And although there have been longer periods of dryness in the region, it’s enough to be noticeable, matched with warm temperatures that make it feel more like spring than winter.
Maybe it’s the weather whiplash that makes it feel especially noticeable. The water year started out strong.
The past 30 days have at least temporarily erased hopes of above-average spring runoff in the Colorado River Basin, according to the February report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.
“Very little precipitation during the last three weeks of January, especially across southern Utah and southwest Colorado,” Cody Moser, a hydrologist with the NOAA forecast center, said Monday during a web briefing to review the agency’s latest monthly water-supply report.
The National Resources Conservation Service maintains snow telemetry (SNOTEL) sites across the Colorado River Basin, which automatically report snow depth and quality. Beginning in December, NOAA produces regular reports based on the SNOTEL data, detailing how that snow might translate into streamflow come spring.
As the Colorado River shrinks at the hands of a two-decades-long drought, there’s a lot on the line. The water supply for 40 million people, agriculture, wildlife and hydropower generation are all hanging in the balance as the region grapples with a dwindling river.
The federal agency most involved with the Colorado River and water in the West is the Bureau of Reclamation. The agency’s measurements and actions can lead headlines throughout the region — including the shortage declaration that raised national alarm last August.
Impacts from climate change and two decades of drought on the Colorado River are fueling fears that states in the Upper Basin – Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – could be forced to curtail their own water use to fulfill obligations under the century-old Colorado River Compact to send a certain amount of water downstream to the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
There has never been a so-called “Compact call” on the river. But as evidence grows that the river isn’t yielding the water assumed by the 1922 Colorado River Compact, questions arise about whether a Compact call may be coming, or whether the states and water interests, drawing on decades of sometimes difficult collaboration, can avert a river war that ends up in court.
A federal dam in Arizona that provides electricity to millions of Americans is at risk this year of running out of the minimum level of water required to generate that power.
Glen Canyon Dam, completed in 1963 and brought online two years later, is at 27 percent capacity, the lowest since it was filled, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Tuesday.
