From Popular Mechanics, August 10:
The Colorado River is approaching thresholds its dams were never meant to cross. What happens next could transform how water and electricity move across the American Southwest.
FROM THE RIM of Lake Powell, you can’t see the danger line. There isn’t a flashing gauge or a chart on the canyon wall that warns visitors when one of the most important machines in America begins to fail. There’s only an invisible number: 3,490 feet above sea level.
Engineers call it “minimum power pool.” Above that elevation, Lake Powell can still push water through Glen Canyon Dam’s massive penstocks, spin its turbines, and send electricity across the Southwest with no trouble. Below it, the dam loses the function that helped justify its existence. The river still wants to move, but the machine starts running out of ways to move it.
Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell sit near the center of the Colorado River system, upstream from Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. Together those reservoirs store the water that cities, farms, and power plants across the Southwest depend on. Now the entire system is being pushed past its limits, and Lake Powell is where the cracks are really starting to show.
Since 2000, the Southwest has been caught in a megadrought that has steadily pulled down water levels in both Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Climate change has made that trend hotter, drier, and harder to reverse. In 2026, a punishingly weak snowpack and an extreme heat wave pushed the basin deeper into emergency. The Bureau of Reclamation began taking steps to keep Lake Powell’s water levels high enough for electricity generation; Hoover Dam’s hydropower output is expected to drop by 40 percent of its maximum capacity this year....
....MUCH MORE
As noted exiting 2018's "Unraveling the mysteries of megadrought"":
Droughts which are common can become megadroughts which are not and when it happens it is a pretty big deal.
So we try to stay attuned to the signs and have posted quite a bit on the downside of dry.
Previously:
Some of the papers that we've looked at over the years:
Temperature and Precipitation Patterns Associated with the 1950s Drought in the U.S. Southwest
AMO, PDO AND SEVERE DROUGHTS IN THE CONTERMINOUS US: A SOUTHWESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the United States
See also:
"U.S. Private Weather Agencies Predict WEAK El Niño in 2014"
Trading the California Drought: Almonds and Water
Projected Price Increases For Foods Affected By the California Drought
California Drought: Why Farmers Are 'Exporting Water' to China
El Nino Won't Come Quick Enough To Break the California Drought
U.S. Drought Monitor August 14, 2012 (and a look at megadroughts)
Ocean changes may trigger US megadrought
From our 2008 post "A Black Swan in Food":
...Donald Coxe, chief strategist of Harris Investment Management and one of my favorite analysts, spoke at my recent Strategic Investment Conference. He shared a statistic that has given me pause for concern as I watch food prices shoot up all over the world.Well we are now at 26 years of near perfect weather for row crops.
North America has experienced great weather for the last 18 consecutive years, which, combined with other improvements in agriculture, has resulted in abundant crops. According to Don, you have to go back 800 years to find a period of such favorable weather for so long a time.
Finally, from March 2015:
"The Economics of the California Water Shortage
Where this gets really interesting is when you throw a historical perspective on the current California drought:
—San Jose Mercury-News "California drought: Past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years, scientists say"
That little red blip at the far right side of the timeline is the current drought.
You could make a reasonable argument that for the last 150 years Californians have been living in a fool's paradise.
