Tag Archive for: Lake Mead

‘We Woke Up and We Lost Half Our Water’ How Climate Change Sparked a Multistate Battle Over the Colorado River.

/in , , /by /Intelligencerby Kyle Paoletta

The Colorado River’s 1,450-mile run begins amid the snowy pinnacles of the Rocky Mountains and ends in the subtropical waters of the Gulf of California. Over the millions of years the river has been running this course, it has gradually carved through the Southwest’s crimson limestone and shale to create a succession of unimaginably vast canyons: Ruby, Cataract, Marble, and Grand. The writer Marc Reisner described the Colorado as the “American Nile.” The Hualapai call it Hakataya, “the backbone.”

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Colorado River Named the Most Endangered in the U.S. by Conservation Group

/in , , /by /CPR Newsby Michael Elizabeth Sakas

The Colorado River is the epicenter of the nation’s water and climate crisis, according to an annual report from the conservation group American Rivers that ranked the waterway the country’s most endangered.

“The eyes of the world have been on the Colorado for a couple years now as the system has been quite literally crashing,” said Matt Rice, the group’s southwest regional director.

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Does All Snow in the Rockies Turn Into Water for Lake Mead?

/in , , /by /12 Newsby Michael Doudna

Lake Mead mostly relies on snowfall in the Rocky Mountains to refill its water levels.

However, after years of drought and increasing temperatures, is the cycle of snow, runoff, and refill still working?

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How Low Can the Colorado River Go? Drought Forces States to Face Tough Choices About Water

/in , , /by /AZ Centralby Brandon Loomis

Water managers from across the Colorado River Basin are preparing to negotiate new rules for allocating the river’s dwindling flow and sharing the pain of a deepening shortage.

They’re adapting the 100-year-old Colorado River Compact to a river that little resembles the bountiful gusher that negotiators from seven states and the federal government in 1922 thought — or hoped — would bless the Southwest forever. The stakes rise with every foot that Lake Mead and Lake Powell fall, as the states and the water users within them recognize they’re due for a tighter squeeze.

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Opinion: Dangerous Game of Chicken on the Colorado River

/in , , /by /The Salt Lake Tribuneby Kyle Roerink

Seven Western states and their leaders — all depending on water from the Colorado River — remain divided.

Split into basins by an imaginary border at Lees Ferry, Arizona, each state can share blame for the rapid depletion of reservoirs that once held over four years’ flow of the Colorado River. But now, Lake Powell and Lake Mead edge closer to empty. With water savings gone, the Lower Basin has been trying to cope, though the Upper Basin carries on business as usual. Meanwhile, 40 millions Americans depend on flows from this over-diverted river.

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Lake Mead’s Source: How’s the Snowpack in the Rockies?

/in , , /by /3 News Las Vegasby Jeff Gillan

Most of Lake Mead’s water has been on quite the journey. Much of it was born on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains.

How much snow hits the Rockies tells us how much water will come to Lake Mead.

“After a pretty good start to the season, we were looking pretty close to normal, or even slightly above normal, in a lot of areas at the beginning of January,” says Paul Miller with the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, which watches the snow and the river.

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Pinal County Farmers Are the First to Feel the Pain of Colorado River Cuts

/in , , /by /Fronterasby Anthony J. Wallace

Farming is in 30-year-old Jace Miller’s blood.

“I love my job, it’s the greatest way of life,” Miller said. “It’s the best profession in the world, in my opinion.”

His great great grandfather came to Arizona in 1917 and started a farm in Gilbert. Four generations later, Jace is still doing it. But that 100-year run is at risk of ending — Triple M Farms, named for the three Miller generations that work there today — is losing access to its most important resource: water.

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Can Cloud Seeding Help Quench the Thirst of the U.S. West?

/in , , /by /Yale Environment 360by James Dinneen

Not since Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D. has the American West been so dry. A recent study in Nature Climate Change found the period 2000 to 2021 was the driest 22 years in more than a millennium, attributing a fifth of that anomaly to human-caused climate change. The megadrought has meant more fires, reduced agricultural productivity, and reduced hydropower generation. Last summer, the United States’ two largest reservoirs — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — reached their lowest levels ever, triggering unprecedented cuts in water allocations to Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico.

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Slo County Had Driest January and February in More Than 150 Years — Is This the ‘New Normal’?

/in , /by /The Tribuneby John Lindsey Mentioned: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/weather/weather-watch/article258890608.html

After reviewing 153 years of rainfall records from Cal Poly’s Irrigation Training & Research Center, there has never been a back-to-back dry January followed by a parched February in San Luis Obispo County. Over the many decades of rain data, if you saw a primarily dry January, it would be followed by a wet February and vice versa during the peak of our rainy season (July 1 through June 30).

Read more at: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/weather/weather-watch/article258890608.html#storylink=cpy

Climate Change, Drought Are Endangering Hydropower Production From Lake Powell. Is It Time to ‘Balance the Water Budget’?

/in , , /by /The Salt Lake Tribuneby Zach Podmore

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.

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