Blog: Unraveling the mystery of disappearing Colorado River water
There’s a mystery afoot in the upper Colorado River Basin: the amount of winter snowpack and the resulting spring and summer runoff haven’t added up in recent years. In 2021, for example, measurements of the snowpack looked close to normal (80% of average), but the streamflows in the spring and summer of that year were only 30% of average, much lower than what was expected. Where did that water go? In the megadrought-stricken Western US, understanding the causes of this mismatch is a question that the 40 million users of water sourced from the Colorado River urgently need answered.