High good, low bad: Mead in April 2012
Posted on | May 1, 2012 | 2 Comments
Late storms are unlikely to alleviate what is shaping up to be a crummy water year on the Colorado River. As of May 1, 2012 the federal Bureau of Reclamation estimates that the river’s headwater states have received less than 50% of normal snowpack. As for what that means downstream, click here for the closing April elevation of Lake Mead, the largest storage reservoir on the Colorado system. After a bumper 2011 water year, April 2012 marks a second month of decline, with Mead dropping slightly more than five feet, giving roughly another 49 feet before Nevada and Arizona face cuts in their water deliveries. UPDATE: Aquafornia, the newsfeed of the Water Education Foundation, carries this mid-day update from the California Department of Water Resources about Sierra water suspended as snow: “Statewide, snowpack water content is only 40 percent of normal for the date, and was only 55 percent of normal the first of April, the time of year when it is historically at its peak.” Click here to keep reading. Also via Aquafornia, a nice piece by Robert Krier of the San Diego Union-Tribune on a possible shift to an El Nino cycle.
Tags: April 2012 > chance of rain > Emily Green > Lake Mead elevations
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May 1st, 2012 @ 5:19 pm
Emily, thanks for update. Shared it on my biz FB page with this lead in:
“Lest recent spring rains complacent do us lull,
Remember ’tis snowpack doth make our aquifers full…”
Wishing you a happy May Day, enjoy!
May 6th, 2012 @ 11:28 am
Interestingly I had read the San Diego UT article. I do in fact read it daily online. But one sentence sums up what I think of these various La Nina/El Nino events.
QUOTE:
“Long-range forecasters, who look many seasons ahead, rarely speak in absolutes; they usually talk in terms of increased odds and probabilities.”
These past couple of decades when it comes to both these weather phenomena, they don’t seem to necessarily behave as in previous historic times past. Like everything else about our planet’s weather, nothing anywhere behaves as it once did. Incredibly, you don’t have to listen to the world’s so-called geniues on the subject to arrive at such conclusions.
I have met numerous immigrants from countries all over the globe here from Asia, Middleeast, Africa and South America and all of them, common folk, have told me the same things. Without refering to Global Warming experts or their GW denying counterparts, all of these people have told me that traditional weather throughout the seasons in their region of the world and home region within their country has not been the same for over a decade. Why would they lie ir what would these humble people have to gain by making up a story ? None of them are Al Gore types looking for fame glitter or glory or obsessed with winning a nobel prize to wave under their competing Peers collective noses.
Clearly things have changed.
On another note. Very few Southern Californians have changed their behavior. The location retail nurseries still seel the water loving exotics and science based chemical systems to maintain them which is nothing more than a sort of artificial life support system which drives the plants to be more and more thirsty. Many of the desert drier points in the west have been strict with their customers, but not So-Cal, or at least that I have personally seen since last visiting.
Another San Diego UT article also brought up the talk of creating a water pipeline from Imperial Valley to San Diego. Apparenly for money from San Diego, Imperial Irigation District is willing to cut off farmers for bigger money out west of them
Yes every year becomes more and more interesting.