The Bureau of Reclamation is going to tell us Friday that there’s not very much water in Lake Powell, and that as a result releases from Powell will be curtailed in the coming year, which sets off a cascading set of effects downstream. I took a crack at explaining this here, but Brett Walton has really done the journalistic heavy lifting to explain what it all means. I don’t have much to add to Brett’s analysis, which is rich and detailed, except for this simple takeaway message: You’ll hear from and see a lot of people in coming days running around like their hair is on fire about this. Chill. As Brett’s piece explains, this is an orderly process.