Posted on 10/24/2021 7:19:00 AM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
DENVER – New projections of Colorado River system inflows into Lake Powell and Lake Mead released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show both reservoirs could reach critical, and lower, levels in the next two years with another drier La Niña weather pattern setting up for the basin this winter.
The latest iteration of the Bureau of Reclamation’s two-year study and two- and five-year projections for levels at the two major western reservoirs within the Colorado River system incorporates the new U.S. Climate Normals released earlier this year, which includes data from 1991-2020 and eliminates the wetter conditions seen in the basin during the 1980s, data that was used for projections for the past 10 years.
It also puts more weight on the 22-year drought that has been ongoing since 2000, and the bureau said the updated data gives forecasters a better look at what could happen to the river basin in the next few years as climate change continues to alter the climatological and weather patterns in the West.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedenverchannel.com ...
Today we are wishing the rain would stop.
Drought and climate change. Yet no mention of the unprecedented pull of water from these reservours.
We’re all gonna die of thirst?
Maybe some of the will slop over.
US west coast braces for ‘atmospheric river’ as huge storm brews
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4006252/posts
“It also puts more weight on the 22-year drought that has been ongoing since 2000”
In 1300 AD that area had a 25 year drought.
And in the 1920s, the San Juan River dried up. It also had a massive drought in the fall and winter of 1976-77.
It is called THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT for a reason.
Wasn’t it like 3 winter seasons ago that California received near 130% of its annual snowpack averages? The lunatics in Sacto should be constructing new reservoirs instead of costly trains to nowhere.
Sittin here watching it rain this morning in my part of Nebraska, and glad I’m from a little town near the middle of nowhere.
In 2003 the drought took the Colorado down low in the headwaters area in Grand County. Granby Reservoir, the big one, was low and we were told we would never see it full again in our lifetimes by the experts. It filled several times over the next few years, we had a 100 year-level high runoff around 2012, followed by a 500 year runoff. The Colorado ran 5,100 cfs behind my house, which was quite impressive. I’ve moved further west now, so won’t see it next spring. The strange weather that ate the runoff recently was mentioned in the article. The predictions of 2003 didn’t turn out to be as dire as expected so we’ll see how things go from here. Man can’t change what’s happening, that’s why we adapted earlier by building more water storage.
Now the government thinks it can control climate by torturing citizens. I’m becoming more libertarian as time goes on and govt becomes more onerous.
I wasn't aware of that one. Interesting. Of course a few years later in 1983 it was so wet, and the water levels behind the dams so poorly managed, that they had to use the spillways on the Hoover dam - running so much flow through them they were significantly damaged.
It would seem mother nature likes her swings around the mean rather than steady state...
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
“And this crisis is exacerbating inequalities that intersect with gender, race, ethnicity and economic security.”
What utter Bull$hit.
Colorado has 24 major tunnels that move water from western Colorado to eastern Colorado under the Continental Divide... that never gets to Lake Powell, etc.
Somebody tell California to use their damn dams and forget about pretending to save some damn fish.
Thanks, didn’t know the exact number but knew about them in general. Yes, western slope govts made a huge mistake not protecting its water decades ago. Couldn’t refuse the money, didn’t realize that water IS money.
Reservoirs are low because the Aholes in Gov’mt took the treehuggers’ $$ and agreed to not build any water storage in last 40 years. So, what reservoirs we have are drained by the doubling of population in the same time period.
Drought has nothing to do with this.
Near where I live now there is a monument to Wayne Aspinall with his famous quote:
“In the West, when you touch water, you touch everything.”
I wonder what he would say about today’s situation.
May be even higher ? : Colorado’s 44 trans basin diversions, 27 of which cross the Continental Divide. Water that crosses the Divide effectively disappears from its original basin.
https://westernconfluence.org/the-great-water-transfer/
The cities have drained the reservoirs....fifty years ago the population was what???
They need to build more but never did
I understand the rush to build new chip factories, BUT, in Arizona?
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