Question of the Day - 14 April 2021

Most of the U.S. west has been extremely and abnormally dry for the past year. Between April and December 2020, Las Vegas itself broke a previous record for consecutive dry days set all the way back in 1959 by a whopping three whole months, logging 240 days in a row without measurable precipitation at McCarran.

The forecast for this spring, as well, offers little hope for relief from the drought conditions that have prevailed for two decades. Indeed, Weather Service and agriculture experts have already warned of possible water-use cutbacks in the Southwest and California, as historically low water levels in the Lake Powell and Lake Mead reservoirs threaten damage to crops, increased difficulty in fighting wildfires, and even, perhaps, cutbacks in industrial and residential water supplies. 

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s spring outlook predicted "an expanding drought with a drier than normal April, May, and June for a large swath of the country from Louisiana to Oregon, including some areas hardest hit by the most severe drought." In a statement, NOAA said it expected the spring drought to impact 74 million people, nearly one out of four of all Americans.

"Hydrologically speaking, we continue to be dealt losing hands," commented a water-operations manager in New Mexico, where some farmers and water officials say conditions haven’t been this dire since the 1950s. "We’ve played them for all they were worth, but we just continue to draw bad cards."

As for Lake Mead, the situation has become ever more dire since last summer. There were no monsoon rains. Record-breaking high temperatures dragged well into fall. Even hardy desert plants well adapted to water scarcity have been going thirsty. 

Yes, the big snowstorm that dumped two feet on the Denver area in mid-March helped the eastern Colorado snowpack, but with below-average snowpack and precipitation throughout the Colorado Basin, spring runoff is already lower than normal and much lower than it needs to be to have any positive impact on the drought. In fact, 84% of the Basin (portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, and two northern Mexican states) are in extreme or exceptional drought, conditions it's experienced three times in the past 20 years since the drought began in 2000 (2002, 2018, and this one). 

The Colorado River's two largest reservoirs, Powell and Mead, are nearing their combined lowest storage total since they were both filled -- Mead in 1935, Powell in 1980. 

On March 17, Utah Governor Spencer Cox declared a state of emergency due to drought.

The latest Lake Mead water-level survey, conducted by the Bureau of Reclamation in March, predicted that Lake Mead's water will fall enough to prompt the first federally declared water shortage in its history in June. If that happens, the formal water-shortage declaration would happen in August. 

“I think we're as close as we’ve ever been to seeing that determination,” said the deputy general manager of resources for the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

That shortage would reduce Southern Nevada’s allocation of 300,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River by 13,000 acre-feet.

Even If that happens, however, southern Nevada would still be in good shape -- for at least a little while. The declaration would reduce the region’s allocation of 300,000 acre-feet from the Colorado River by 13,000 acre-feet. The 287,000 acre-feet allocation would leave it with 37,000 acre-feet more than the 250,000 consumed region-wide last calendar year, thanks in large part to many water-conservation policies and agreements in place hereabouts. Also, southern Nevada gets 10% of its water from sources other than Lake Mead.  

But the bottom line is this: Snowpack and runoff are down, temperatures continue to rise, and it looks like the "water situation at Lake Mead" will be getting worse before there's even a small chance of it getting better. 

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