Lake Mead hits historic low water level as Colorado River struggles

21 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by geox

10 Comments

mikhailfranco

4 hours ago

Lake Mead (1,040ft) is 5ft above 70% power impairment (1,035ft).

But if you look at the last 2 years, this date is typically the minimum for the year. So it seems unlikely to hit zombie power pool this year.

https://mead.uslakes.info/Level/

Now we have a Super El Nino starting, which should bring higher than usual rainfall to the Colorado Basin in the fall and winter. So, in principle, next year might not be as bad as this year, and power pool limits are postponed for 2 or more years out.

spwa4

3 hours ago

Reading your comment kind of exposes something about our models. These are not numbers anyone can trust. Like the temperature this summer in Europe these things cannot reasonably be said to be correctly predicted. The IPCC average prediction for Europe was 0.3 degrees warmer than last year. We are in danger of hitting TWO degrees, and have hit 1.5 degrees increase, between 500% and 700% more than the IPCC prediction.

Note: 0.3 was already a lot, which is why the complaining with the 1.5/2 degrees hotter is so enormous.

And the problem is what will happen next. If the 0.3 degree is still accurate over a 10 year period (I mean, look at the data ..., 2027 is not going to be 2 degrees hotter than 2026 that's just not realistic), then the next two or three European summers should be colder than 2026, probably colder than 2025 and 2024 too. So this year: enormous pro-global warming message, but people should realize that the message is probably going to reverse.

Is this really the state of the art in weather and climate prediction?

k12sosse

8 hours ago

Don't worry we can nuke Ottawa and take what's rightfully ours. - America

metalman

8 hours ago

thats fine, trump already granted us statehood, and then we would take you from the inside.

jmclnx

4 hours ago

But keep building those data centers in the southwest /s

rho138

9 hours ago

But muh capitalism and growing crop grass in the fucking desert!

stvltvs

4 hours ago

Over half of Colorado River water goes to agriculture, about half of that irrigates alfalfa for animal feed. It's not clear if that's what you meant by capitalism, but lawns are a very small portion of what the water is used for.

https://watereducationcolorado.org/fresh-water-news/most-com...

apothegm

an hour ago

“Crop grass” sure sounds like “alfalfa”.

stvltvs

32 minutes ago

Maybe I'm thinking too literally, but alfalfa isn't grass. It's a legume.

apothegm

13 minutes ago

My mind went to alfalfa because lawn grass isn’t a crop. And I for one didn’t know alfalfa isn’t a grass. I suspect its being a legume is not common knowledge.