A Day of Reckoning is Coming and Schoon on Colorado River Basin Water Usage

Texas should build the largest series of dams in US History

trapping most of the southerly waterflow, allowing the west to collapse into retardia

Water shortage for Powell and Mead are direct result of drought - 70% of the west is in drought. 300,000 square miles of that — an area larger than any single state in the continental US — is considered in "extreme” or “exceptional” drought, the most intense categories.

Look at the map.

The Colorado River basin is huge.

Winter snowpack has been dismal - even when it's kinda good like it was in the Sierra's at the end of 2021 (140% avg snowpack) 2022 was so bad it all melted and evaporated before May, which for people paying attention this is year over year over year now.

Piss poor winters and scorchingly dry, hot summers except for monsoons, but that isn't what builds the watersheds.

https://imgur.com/clQnbB8

Nobody is removing Glen Canyon dam.

They would need to exhaust their current plan which hasn't taken effect yet.

The Upper Basin:

-Evaluate whether the Glen Canyon Dam can be modified to "allow water to be pumped or released from below currently identified critical and dead pool elevations," it said in a statement. Remember: a "dead pool" is when when a reservoir isn’t high enough to release water downstream through a dam.
-Work with basin states and tribes to release water from the Upper Basin reservoirs to help "enhance" elevation levels at Lake Powell.
-The bureau said it will invest in voluntary agreements with stakeholders and states to further conserve the system.
[link to www.cnn.com (secure)]

Give it a rest AC

Divide co here.
We have been getting monsoon style downpours every evening for almost 3 months. I can’t keep my driveway in place.

Never seen so much rain. They are fuking with the weather. They caused the droughts.

I live in Western Colorado and the snow pack has been fine. The only bad year we had was 2019. It has been raining and snowing every year. The drought is fake ghey.

Im at the Junction of the Grand and Gunnison rivers. Western Colorado has been getting rain nearly every day for past 2 months. Idk how they could be having a drought further down river.

People who don't live in Colorado have no idea. It's like fucking Pacific northwest over here lately and our river dumps into the Colorado. They are releasing the water on purpose and blaming fake fucking drought.

Speaking of retardia

You do know that the Rio Grande isn't so Grande these days. This is the second largest river in the US.

From late June..
[link to www.tceq.texas.gov (secure)]

Texas isn't quite what it was drought-wise as in 2011. But each week it gets a little worse. They did get good rain yesterday and today in south and west Texas - but it's not hanging around.

All major rivers in Texas run through extreme and exceptional drought areas.

Drought Map:
[link to droughtmonitor.unl.edu (secure)]

I think your prolly correct. I sitting in a massive rain storm now in Colorado Springs, and it’s every day!

To watch later

The last 2 years have been above average monsoon years. So much so that it's reaching into Canada due to jet stream.

We got 2 inches of rain here last week 'one day' in the AZ desert - over a few hours' time.
But it doesn't hit the same locales every day. Hit and miss even though the air is highly moisturized, cells don't always develop in the same spots.

I've been watching my local radar and that of the 4 corner states.

As for the releasing of water...not so sure about that. The reservoirs are required to release water based on contracts to users. They are aware of 'water losses' in the lower basin.

Otherwise.. here's what the Bureau of Reclamation said today..

The Lower Basin:

-Take administrative actions to define how Lake Mead will operate at elevations below 1,025 feet. The goal of this is to reduce the risk of the reservoir "declining to critically low levels," the statement said.
-Create new initiatives that would make sure urban and agricultural water is being use efficiently.
-The agency said it will come up with ways to "address evaporation, seepage and other system losses in the Lower Basin."
-Through studies, it will evaluate if modifications could be made to Hoover Dam to allow water to be pumped from lower elevations. Like the plan for the Glen Canyon Dam in the ---Upper Basin, the bureau wants to see if it is possible to pump water from below "dead pool" levels.

The main problem is drought. Summer monsoons aren't the answer even when they are charged-up like the last two seasons. The water needs to slowly/steadily absorb into the water table and why snowpack is required and preferred.

There are about a couple hundred people whose job it is to watch the drought conditions and water managements??? Two years ago, they were praying for 4 straight years of above avg snowpack - this spring it jumped to a decade.

They know they waited too long on conservation and now upper basin states don't want to carry some of the load on conservation.

Pretty well laid out right here.. (rolling live updates that started 3 hours ago)

[link to www.cnn.com (secure)]

Lake Mead though is up 18 inches since July 27 and that's directly related to monsoon.

However, it lost 10 feet in two months earlier.

Here we see how they are playing with the numbers.

Why the actual water level in Lake Mead doesn't match up with what was announced today
From Angela Fritz, CNN Senior Climate Editor

We should address the elephant in the room: There is actually less water in Lake Mead than what the US Bureau of Reclamation reported on Tuesday.

And, significantly, it was enough to prevent Southern California from having to take its first mandatory cut of Colorado River water.

So what’s happening?

Earlier this year, the bureau announced an emergency plan to keep Lake Powell from plummeting so low that Glen Canyon Dam wouldn’t be able to generate hydropower. It is releasing more water from upstream reservoirs, and it’s also withholding water in Lake Powell, rather than sending it downstream to Lake Mead and the Lower Colorado River Basin.

Lake Powell was supposed to release 7.48 million acre-feet of water to Lake Mead this year. Instead, it only released 7 million, leaving 480,000 in Powell.

Tuesday’s report took that into account. It lays out the numbers as if that water was delivered to Lake Mead.

Of course, all of this water is still in the same Colorado River system. Lake Powell and Lake Mead are like massive buckets that manage the rate of flow through the river and ensure everyone along it has the water they need.


Patti Aaron, a spokesperson for the bureau, previously explained it to CNN this way:

“If ‘actual elevation’ projected January 1 elevations are used in August, it would almost certainly put the Lower Basin in Tier 2 in 2023,” Aaron said. “To keep the water accounting ‘operationally neutral’ and not penalize the Lower Basin for leaving the water to benefit Lake Powell, we will run the models as if the [480,000 acre-feet] had been delivered to Lake Mead.”

Notably, running the math this way wasn’t enough to prevent the Lower Basin from falling into a Tier 2 shortage — but it was enough to prevent California from having to make cuts.

The real “physical elevation” of Lake Mead is expected to be around 1,041 feet come January. The projection after adding the withheld water was 1,047.

And California doesn’t experience a Colorado River water cut until Mead is projected to drop to 1,045 feet.
[link to www.cnn.com (secure)]

If they were serious, they would organize work crews to pull non native tamarisk from Western Colorado and Utah. Supposedly those thirsty plants suck up 400 gal per day.

The Drought is being caused because Liberals are destroying

all the reservoir systems that cause water uptake and allow rain to fall.

This is 100% man made... why do you think the US Hasn't had a serious drought since 1929?

Because we built the largest reservoir system in the world

Now its being destroyed by Liberal fucking fanatics

Michigan gets 90% of its rainfall from lake effect clouds

If Michigan didn't have the great lakes we would be a desert

Cool story. But you know historically speaking there have been droughts and floods in the west long before the largest reservoir was ever conceived.

At least the liberals passed a bill to fund some reservoir repairs as well as "address evaporation, seepage and other system losses in the Lower Basin." 4 Billion towards western mega-drought and water conservation.

40 million Americans rely on the Colorado river water for drinking purposes.

"Constructed four generations ago, the massive dam at El Capitan Reservoir in Lakeside, Calif., is capable of storing over 36 billion gallons of water — enough to supply every resident in San Diego for most of a year. Today, it's three-quarters empty — intentionally kept low because of concerns it could fail under the strain of too much water."
[link to www.npr.org (secure)]

No droughts since 1929.

anyone mentioning millions of immigrants and growing rice and cotton in the desert? Is there really a drought?

The federal government announced that the Colorado River will operate in a Tier 2 shortage condition for the first time starting in January as the West’s historic drought has taken a severe toll on Lake Mead.

What this means:

Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will have to further reduce their Colorado River use beginning in January. California will not yet have cuts made to the water it receives from the Colorado River.
Of the impacted states, Arizona will face the largest cuts — 592,000 acre-feet — or about 21% of the state’s yearly allotment of river water.

Those cuts are part of a system that Colorado River states have already agreed to in the case of an unprecedented water shortage.

But experts say those mandatory cuts are not enough to save the river.
[link to edition.cnn.com (secure)]

Okay so the Bureau of Reclamation punted, and the real pain comes next year .. !??

What's going on in France?

French Drought

Not French Dip - French Drought

Loire River

https://imgur.com/a/cQ5QWWN

This river is extremely low droughted. Worse than 1976 drought state.

And there are 4 nuclear plants on this river.

LOIREAUXENCE, France (Reuters) - France's river Loire, famous for the hundreds of castles gracing its shores, is a shallow river at the best of times, but this year even its flat-bottom tourist barges can barely navigate waters greatly reduced by a record drought.

Even some 100 kilometers from where the Loire empties into the Atlantic Ocean, sand banks now stretch as far as the eye can see, large islands connect to the shore and in places people can practically walk from one side of the river to the other.

The Loire valley - a UNESCO World Heritage site famed for majestic chateaux such as Chambord, Chenonceau and Azay-le-Rideau - has suffered historically low water levels before, but this year's drought should be a wake-up call, said Eric Sauquet.

River flow is at about 40 cubic metres per second - less than a twentieth of average annual levels. It would be even lower if authorities did not release water from dams at Naussac and Villerest, built in the 1980s partly to guarantee cooling water supply to four nuclear plants built along the river.
[link to www.msn.com (secure)]