update: Jeff Lukas, in the comments, notes that I missed something important, which is the distinction between statewide averages and the east-west precip divide. As he correctly points out, that statewide blob of wet-looking Colorado hides the fact that it’s been extremely wet to the east, and relatively dry west of the continental divide. Here’s …
Continue reading ‘Warm in the West, but not as dry as you might have thought’ »
Arizona lawyer Grady Gammage, a member of that state’s water establishment, opened a conference I attended last week with an explanation of why he became so engrossed in trying to understand “the Law of the River,” that bundle of laws and customs that govern the management and distribution of the waters of the Colorado River. …
Continue reading ‘The Code of the Pirates and the Law of the River’ »
The National Park Service with a warning for Lake Mead boaters as the big reservoir, a recreational favorite outside Las Vegas, drops to record lows: From the Park Service’s Lake Mead facebook page
I sent Lissa a picture from the Arizona side overlook of Hoover Dam this evening. Her response: “You can almost see its feet.” I drove out from Las Vegas to see Lake Mead and Hoover Dam this evening after a two-day Colorado River law and policy conference in a windowless hotel meeting room. Speaker after …
While we’ve all been obsessing over the elevation of Lake Mead, there’s a second looming lake elevation problem that could really complicate Colorado River management and increases the risk of a 2016 Arizona shortage declaration beyond the current estimates. Depending on how things play out over the next couple of months, this second problem could …
Tony Davis reports the Bureau of Reclamation’s latest model runs up the odds of a 2016 Lower Basin shortage declaration to one in three: The odds of a shortage in water deliveries to Arizona and other Lower Colorado River Basin states in 2016 are now 33 percent, up from 21 percent as predicted in January, …
Continue reading ‘Risk of Colorado River shortage declaration rising’ »
In Las Vegas for a two-day conference on the Colorado River law and policy. Checked into my hotel room, looked out the window to see the Bellagio Fountains: My life has become self-parody.
People I talked to on my recent trip to Yuma repeatedly ticked off the three components of the regional economy: ag federal (mostly military) tourism If you count me as “3” on a Gila main canal ditch bank as a squadron of military helicopters flew over, this picture captures them all. I think it’s fair …
At the 7 p.m. Pacific Time reading this evening, the surface elevation of Lake Mead dropped to 1080.18 feet above sea level, surpassing the previous low set last August to mark the lowest the big Colorado River Reservoir has been since it was filled in the 1930s: The record came as Hoover Dam’s operators ramped …
Continue reading ‘1080.18: Lake Mead breaks another record, lowest since it was filled’ »
It was only when I was captioning and filing my pictures from my recent tours of the old bits of Arizona’s Lower Colorado River water infrastructure that I noticed what the graffiti here said: “I’m stuck in my ways.” It’s a surreal spot – springing from the side of a harsh desert canyon, a remarkable …