At Lake Mead and Lake Powell, a historic low
On Sunday, the Colorado River passed a grim milestone. Total combined storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell dropped to a historic low. It was my Wilburys colleague Jack Schmidt who noticed the milestone:
On Sunday, July 12, the surface of Lake Powell was 3524.32 feet above sea level, and the surface of Lake Mead was at 1042.77 ft. These elevations equated to 5,505,869 and 7,169,640 acre feet (af), respectively, of live storage in the two reservoirs. The combined total live storage of these reservoirs was 12,675,509 af. The last time the combined total live storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead was this small was May 23, 1957, during construction of Glen Canyon Dam when the entire amount of 12,668,000 af was stored in Lake Mead.
Part of the subsequent analysis from the Wilburys team, building on Jack’s detailed reservoir storage analysis that’s been so central to our group’s work, is that it only goes down from here. For a while.
Every day going forward, until runoff from the 2026-2027 winter snowpack begins next spring, a new record low will likely be set. This is a significant moment in the evolving Colorado River water supply crisis.