Outlook for the Colorado River gets even worse
Federal forecasters are predicting an increasingly dire summer across the Colorado River basin, with the latest projections showing the waterway on track for record-low flows. The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center’s May projections for the West’s most important river show just 13 percent of average flowsinto the river’s biggest headwaters reservoir, Lake Powell, amounting to just 800,000 acre-feet. “The record hot and dry winter is the main story,” Cody Moser, a hydrologist with the center, said on a webinar Thursday. “Just really no good news this winter.” Monitoring stations across the region’s mountainous headwaters registered record-low snowpack at many locations, he said.
Other Colorado River management news:
- The Salt Lake Tribune: Lake Powell forecast worsens, on track for worst year on record, forecasters say
- KUNC (Greeley, Colo.): ‘No good news’: Colorado River forecast gets historically bad
- Arizona’s Family (Phoenix): Low Colorado River levels in Yuma raise water fears
- Colorado Newsline: Opinion: ‘No new depletions’ has to be in a Colorado River deal
- KOOL (Denver, Colo.): Opinion: Watering your lawn won’t “save” Colorado’s water from California
- Audubon: Blog: Ecological drought in the Colorado River basin –seeing the full picture
- Coyote Gulch: Blog: How far will Lake Mead fall after all of its “banked” water has been withdrawn?
