1 week Ago
Over the last three years, the Colorado River Basin has experienced three relatively healthy winters. But that decent snowpack, after melting, hasn’t filled reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell as much as water users across the West might like, due to years of drought and overuse. Recent forecasts show Lake Mead and Lake Powell will remain roughly one-third full after snow melts down from the mountains across the West into the Colorado River and its tributaries this year.
“Everybody keeps hoping that the only way we’re going to really rebuild storage is if we have another ridiculous, gangbuster year like 2023,” said Jack Schmidt, a watershed sciences professor at Utah State University and Director of its Center for Colorado River Studies. But, he continued, “that’s highly unlikely.” Winter of 2023 brought substantial snow to the parched region, with snowpack levels reaching over 150% of the 30-year median .
The banner snowpack led to 10.6 million acre-feet of water flowing into Lake Powell over the spring and summer — a whopping 166% of the average runoff seen between 1991 and 2020. That helped bring Lake Powell up to 38% in July 2023 after the reservoir hit a record low of 22% in February of that year.
That was followed by another good snow year for the basin basin, with levels hitting 113% of the median in 2024. But that above-average snowpack translated to a below-average runoff of 83%, or about 5.3 million acre-feet of water reaching Lake Powell.
That was lower than what forecasters had predicted earlier in 2024, and the reservoir saw a smaller bump — reaching 42% full in July. The discrepancy between snowpack and runoff was largely because soil across the Colorado River Basin was so dry, Schmidt said. Dry soil absorbs melting snow, so less water ends up in reservoirs.
And this year, soil across most of the Colorado River Basin is drier than normal — and even drier than it was this time last year. That means despite this year’s near average snowpack levels, which were at 94% of median as of April 6, runoff into Lake Powell is expected to be just 67% of normal, or 4.3 million acre-feet, according to the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.
Warming and drought brought on by climate change have reduced the Colorado River’s flows by about 20 percent since the turn of the century. And human use of the river’s water has only compounded the problem. Agriculture accounts for 52% of the water humans use from the Colorado River.
The water is used to irrigate thirsty crops like alfalfa and hay, which feed cows. “We’re not reducing consumptive use as much as we should,” Schmidt said. This year’s lackluster forecasted runoff into Lake Powell coincides with tense political negotiations between the seven states that use Colorado River water: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The states are hashing out new guidelines for managing the river and its reservoirs, which provide water to 40 million people across the West, for when the current rules expire in 2026. The states mainly disagree on which of them should have to cut their water use — and by how much..
