I report without comment reports of alligators in the Colorado River (Palisade is in western Colorado, just upstream from Grand Junction): Wednesday, a group of kids playing near the water at Riverbend Park raised the alarm when they say they spotted an alligator on the bank. They say their parents didn’t believe them, but a …
James Lawrence Powell concludes his otherwise excellent western water history Dead Pool with an apocalyptic vision of the abandonment of Phoenix, “a Grapes of Wrath-like exodus in reverse” as drought saps the Arizona city of its last reserves of water. It’s a vision I don’t buy (hence my “otherwise excellent” tag), because we won’t abandon …
The question of how much it rained or snowed is an important one in water management, but answering it is not trivial. The answer depends on a mix of remote sensing data, radar and rain gages (often data collected by volunteers). I got a helpful note yesterday from Jeff Lukas about a western precipitation map I …
At April’s “Implications of Lower Lake Levels” symposium, Brad Udall talked about the importance of the Australian example for the western United States. From 2000 to 2010, Udall said, parts of Australia experienced 40 to 50 percent reductions in river flow, which said has profoundly changed societal discussions about water. Australia’s “big dry” may be …
Continue reading ‘Is desal one lesson of Australia’s “big dry”?’ »
Update: I’ve added a post with a better seasonal precip map than the one below: ***** As we close in on the end of the current water year, the US Bureau of Reclamation has reported what passes for good news these days on the Colorado River. This month’s forecast for year-end storage levels in Lake …
To track my favorite topic, I have a Google news alert set on “Colorado River”. I’m trying to track water policy issues, but every year beginning in spring that news is accompanied by a macabre uptick in stories about people falling into the river, flipping their boats, going missing, and frequently drowning. Crews search for …
From the US Bureau of Reclamation’s photo archive, Hoover Dam seen from the upstream side, circa 1935:
From this morning’s newspaper (sub/ad req), a story about the new paper in today’s Science by Jonathan Overpeck and Brad Udall about climate change in the West. Udall and Overpeck have become fixtures on the western water meeting circuit over the last several years delivering this message, and the paper contains no real surprises. But …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Dry Times Ahead in the West’ »
I’ve written in the past about the remarkable fact that, despite the 10 driest years on record on the Colorado River, no one’s had their allocation reduced or cut off. The first plausible scenario under which that would change happens when the surface of Lake Mead drops to 1,075 feet above sea level. Under the …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: Chances of Mead Hitting 1075’ »
The suddenly ubiquitous Bureau of Reclamation Colorado River supply-demand graph showed up today in a helpful Bruce Finley story in today’s Denver Post about the conversation in Colorado regarding the disconnect between shrinking Colorado River supply and growing Colorado River demand: Colorado River water consumed yearly for agriculture and by the 30 million Westerners who …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: The Conversation About Limits’ »