“That’s somewhat of an unexpected boost from Mother Nature,” said Martin Hoerling, a climate scientist and hydrologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Recent flooding across the U.S. Southwest is providing rare relief to thirsty reservoirs that had fallen to record lows during a yearslong megadrought, csmonitor.com reported. Storms in late October and early November sent torrents of water through normally dry creeks that overflowed their banks and flooded local communities.
Lake Powell Gains 20 Feet
Hundreds of people were told to evacuate as flooding cut off access to some areas. Most of that water, however, is ending up feeding depleted lakes and underground aquifers, Hoerling told usnews.com.
Last winter’s lackluster snowfall did little to recharge water bodies when it melted in the spring and summer. Then came the chaotic climate phenomenon El Niño, which intensified heavy rain and floods across the region, wavebrowsernews.com reported. Experts say its impacts will last several more months, potentially further boosting water supplies.
Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the U.S., rose more than 20 feet from its mid-September low, according to usnews.com. That growth dwarfed the reservoir’s gains from this year’s snowmelt, Hoerling told csmonitor.com.
Even with the influx, the lake remained just over a quarter full, and 15 of its 17 boat launches remained unusable as of Friday, csmonitor.com reported. The floodwaters and additional rain could raise the lake along the Arizona-Utah border further, reaching a total of over 1.2 million acre-feet, which is enough to support around 4 million average families for a year, Hoerling estimated to usnews.com.
Local Water Restrictions Lifted
Cities across the region reported some of their wettest weather in decades, according to wavebrowsernews.com. Before storms began dumping about 7 inches of rain around Pagosa Springs, Colorado, in October, more than 10,000 people were under water restrictions, csmonitor.com reported.
Restaurants in the town were encouraged to serve water only on request, town manager David Harris told usnews.com. Those restrictions have now been lifted following the storms.
“While the storm was destructive, I think there is a silver lining,” Harris told csmonitor.com. “You’re getting a good start to the winter snowpack in the higher elevations.”
Upper Lake Mary in Northern Arizona, which supplies Flagstaff with up to 40% of its water, received more than 3 billion gallons of water since early October, Flagstaff water production manager Brian Huntzinger told usnews.com. Storms last weekend dumped the equivalent of more than two years of water into the town’s surface water supply, providing a buffer for an operation that depends heavily on underground aquifers, Huntzinger told csmonitor.com.
“It’s just a great, great thing to see,” Huntzinger told usnews.com. “We might be overflowing at this rate before we see any snow fly.”
In central Arizona, heavy floodwaters that trapped people in their homes gushed into streams feeding the Verde River, csmonitor.com reported. That prompted water officials to release water from two nearly full dams into the Verde’s normally dry stretch in metro Phoenix, said Bo Svoma, the principal meteorologist at the Salt River Project, according to usnews.com.
Colorado River Management Decisions
Despite the intense rains, the region remains in drought, and decisions already have been made to divvy up water in the Colorado River basin, csmonitor.com reported.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is unlikely to change its water releases from Lake Powell or other areas until it knows when snowpack has peaked, typically around April, said Jack Schmidt, a Utah State University professor who studies the Colorado River, according to usnews.com.
Reclamation spokesperson Mary Carlson acknowledged conditions have improved but added that “considerable uncertainty remains,” csmonitor.com reported. Under the federal plan for managing the Colorado River’s Lower Basin, California, Nevada, and Arizona will collectively reduce water use by 1.25 million acre-feet annually in the next two years, according to usnews.com.
Some Arizona cities have agreed to fund preliminary work to reduce reliance on the Colorado River by expanding an existing dam on the Verde River to capture runoff from storms, Svoma told csmonitor.com.
“We need to figure out how to be resilient in a drier future,” Hoerling told csmonitor.com. “And we’re not quite there yet.”
