The Colorado River Is In Trouble — And 40 Million People Could Feel It
The Southwest did not get the winter it needed. Not even close.
Snowpack across the Colorado River Basin is sitting at around half of normal or worse depending on where you look. Colorado hit just 62 percent of normal at the end of February. Some spots across the broader Southwest are doing worse than that. Every major river basin in the West just came off one of its warmest winters on record.
And now a heat wave is showing up to finish the job.
The Snow Is Almost Gone
Whatever snow is left up in those mountains is melting fast — way faster than anyone wanted — and water managers across seven states are bracing for what that means when summer actually arrives. What it means is potential shortages for the roughly 40 million people whose water comes from the Colorado River.
That's Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming all watching this play out with varying degrees of panic.
The Numbers Are Already Bad
Denver Water gets 90 percent of its supply from mountain snowpack. Right now their collection areas are between 55 and 71 percent of normal and they've already told residents that drought response measures are coming. A major American city warning people about water. That's where we are.
Lake Powell is expected to pull in just 52 percent of its normal inflow from snowmelt this year. It's getting close to what's called minimum power pool — the level where it stops generating hydroelectric power. Water crisis and energy crisis, same package.
Why the Heat Wave Makes Everything Worse
Snowpack isn't just frozen water sitting around. It's basically a slow release system — it builds up all winter and then feeds rivers and reservoirs gradually through spring and into summer at a pace the whole system can actually use. When an early heat wave rolls in, that slow release becomes a flood and then nothing. The rivers spike, reservoirs get a quick burst, and then the flow dies before summer even starts. The water is gone before anyone can actually use it.
The National Weather Service has above average temperatures forecast across the western two thirds of the country through at least March 29. No significant snowstorms are in the outlook to make up for any of this.
This Has Been Coming for a While
The Colorado River has been overused for a century. The water rights were carved up based on flow estimates from unusually wet years that were never representative of normal. The system has been running on borrowed time for decades and warming has only made the gap between what's available and what's being taken wider every year.
Water managers are doing everything they can. But you can't manage your way out of snow that simply never fell.
Forty million people are counting on those mountains. Right now the mountains have very little to give.
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