Tag Archive for: US drought

Tucson Votes to Give Up Some of its CAP water to Help Save Lake Mead

/in , , /by /KOLD News 13by Bud Foster

The Tucson City Council voted unanimously to give back about a third of its Central Arizona Project water allocation to help an ailing Lake Mead.

The lake, hit hard by a prolonged drought, is at 31% capacity and dropping. It provides water for 20 million people in Arizona, California and Nevada as well as large swaths of farmland.

“I feel that the city of Tucson is in a position where we can add water back to the lake, specifically Lake Mead,” said Tucson Mayor Regina Romero before the vote.

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More Reservoirs May Run Dry and the Great Salt Lake Will Continue to Decline, State Officials Warn

/in , , /by /FOX 13 Salt Lake Cityby Ben Winslow

More reservoirs across Utah may run dry and the Great Salt Lake will continue to decline, state officials warned lawmakers on Wednesday.

During a briefing before the Utah State Legislature’s Natural Resources Interim Committee, lawmakers were told that 99% of Utah remains in severe or extreme drought. That’s actually an improvement over last year, when a huge chunk of the state was in “exceptional” drought — the worst category.

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California’s Drought, Relentless and Inexorable, Takes its Toll

/in , , /by /California Weeklyby Will Shuck

With the rainy season come and gone, drought’s withered hand remained firmly fixed on California this month, as it has been, with few exceptions, for the last decade.

Woes pile up. Rain didn’t save us, the snowpack is all but gone, the Coastal Commission says no desalinating sea water, and urban-interface fires have already begun.

It’s almost summer in the Golden State.

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Late-Season Snowfall Helps California in Dry Winter, Drought

/in , /by /AP News

Heavy snow in Northern California has given a recent boost of moisture to a region grappling with drought.

The Central Sierra Snow Lab at the University of California, Berkeley said Friday that more than 16 inches (43 centimeters) of snow fell in the past day.

“We are now at 61% of our normal #snow #water equivalent for this date,” said a tweet from the lab specializing in snow hydrology and climatology.

The spring storm had triggered warnings from the Oregon border down through the southern Cascades and the northern Sierra Nevada. But the late-season precipitation was welcome after a dry winter.

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Record Drought Conditions Across West Raise Concerns for Summer Dry Season

/in , , /by /NOAA by National Centers for Environmental Information

The current multi-year drought across the West is the most extensive and intense drought in the 22-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor. Precipitation deficits during the first three months of 2022, across parts of the western U.S., are at or near record levels. As the climatological wet season ends across portions of the West, with below average snow cover and reservoirs at or near record-low levels, concerns for expanding and intensifying drought and water resource deficits are mounting.

During March, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 44.1°F, 2.6°F above the 20th-century average. This ranked in the warmest third of the 128-year period of record. The year-to-date (January-March) average contiguous U.S. temperature was 36.3°F, 1.2°F above average, ranking in the middle third of the record.

The March precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 2.26 inches, 0.25 inch below average, and ranked in the driest third of the 128-year period of record. The year-to-date precipitation total was 5.66 inches, 1.30 inches below average, ranking seventh driest in the January-March record.

Temperatures were above average across much of the West and along the East Coast. California ranked sixth warmest for the January-March period.

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Carlsbad Desalination Plant Shields Region From Megadrought

/in , , /by /Water News Network Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

As the worst drought in 1,200 years grips the West, the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant is protecting the San Diego region with 50 million gallons a day of drought-proof water.

Completed in 2015, the plant was built before the period of increasing inflation that’s driving up prices for water infrastructure projects that are just starting. That means the desal plant is safeguarding the region’s economy and quality of life today at a lower cost than it would be to build now.

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Spring Outlook: Drought to Expand Amid Warmer Conditions

/in , , /by /NOAA-NWS Climate Prediction Center / California DWR

NOAA issued its U.S. Spring Outlook today and for the second year in a row, forecasters predict prolonged, persistent drought in the West where below-average precipitation is most likely. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center — part of the National Weather Service — is also forecasting above-average temperatures for most of the U.S. from the Desert Southwest to the East Coast and north through the Midwest to the Canadian border from April to June.

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Lake Powell Hits Historic Low, Raising Hydropower Concerns

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Sam Metz and Felicia Fonseca

A massive reservoir known as a boating mecca dipped below a critical threshold on Tuesday raising new concerns about a source of power that millions of people in the U.S. West rely on for electricity.

Lake Powell’s fall to below 3,525 feet (1,075 meters) puts it at its lowest level since the lake filled after the federal government dammed the Colorado River at Glen Canyon more than a half century ago — a record marking yet another sobering realization of the impacts of climate change and megadrought.

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Snow Drought Expands as Western U.S. is Running Out of Time to Replenish Water Supplies

/in , , /by /National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)

February total precipitation was record low at over 200 Snow Telemetry sites, leading to continued expansion of snow drought conditions across the West. Fifty percent of the SNOTEL sites now have snow water equivalent that is less than one-third of historical conditions, up from 22% in early February.  In California, the driest January and February in state history has led to a March 1 statewide snowpack of less than 70% of average, down from 160% at the start of the new year.

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Cascading Climate Calamities Target West’s Water, Legal System

/in , , /by /Bloomberg Lawby Bobby Magill

A dire United Nations climate change report confirms what water lawyers in the West have known for a long time—that drought is becoming the norm in the region, and adaptation is essential.

“Every time we see it written down, it gets a little more real,” said William Caile, a water lawyer who is of counsel at Holland & Hart LLP in Denver, referring to the report’s forecasts of water scarcity.

The report, released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a 3,675-page deep-dive into what the latest scientific research says about what’s at risk as fossil fuels continue to warm the planet. Water scarcity amid rising air and streamwater temperatures will afflict much of North America, exacerbating biological diversity losses, agricultural productivity decline, and wildfire, the report found.

The Southwest is among the regions that the IPCC says will soon be profoundly different. The Colorado River, which provides water to 40 million people from Denver to Los Angeles, courses through the increasingly arid Southwest, which is approaching a “tipping point” at which long-term water scarcity conflict with high water use and farming, the report concludes.

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