Is Lake Mead in peril? Snowpack declines in the West, worrying some

Water managers aren’t in for the exceptional year they had hoped for, with snowpack across the West underperforming in the latest federal update, released Wednesday.

In the Upper Colorado River Basin, where the majority of the flow into Lake Mead originates, snowpack sits at 85 percent of the historic median — a noticeable decline from January numbers that put it closer to 95 percent. The Spring Mountains in Southern Nevada, important for flows to rural groundwater users, continues to fall short, at zero percent of the median as of Wednesday.

Tom Albright, a UNR professor who serves as Nevada’s deputy state climatologist, said Southern Nevada’s dry streak — more than 200 days of no measurable rain and nearly nonexistent snowfall — is a harbinger of what’s to come throughout the West.

“This is a little bit of a sneak peek of what looks to be in store in the coming decades as a pretty normal thing,” Albright said. “Our area, even independent of climate change, is highly variable from year to year. But these are the conditions that are simply going to become more common.”

Lake Mead’s less-than-rosy future

Such a problem complicates ongoing negotiations between two divided groups of Colorado River Basin states that are fighting over river allocations and operating guidelines that will stand for the next 20 years.

Before 2026 ends, the seven states must decide who is responsible for taking cuts to their share of the river in times of extreme drought. A lengthy court battle is on the table — a last-resort that could stall a decision for up to two decades, when even less water will be available to divvy up.

“In the meantime, we keep getting these reports about our actual physical conditions that show the water supply is dropping,” said Jennifer Pitt, the Audubon Society’s Colorado River program director. “I fear that without having some kind of consensus agreement between the states, we may end up in an uncertain situation about how to manage this diminishing water supply.”

Lake Mead, the source of about 90 percent of the Las Vegas area’s drinking water, reached an all-time low in 2022 but has since bounced back because of two good snowpack years and record federal funding for water conservation.

Such funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act has been a target of the Trump administration, with water projects meant to use unspent money facing an uncertain future.

It’s still too soon in the water year to make any definitive conclusions about the snow season, Pitt said.

“It’s early February, and we still have a good couple of months to go. One can always hope,” she said. “But this is concerning: Reservoirs are already quite low.”

Bone-dry Southwest no help for water woes

The dry conditions felt in Las Vegas and across the Southwest are concerning — especially for rural water users dependent on surface water and groundwater that doesn’t come from the Colorado River.

“The 3-4 week outlooks suggest persistent and potentially worsening snow drought conditions in the southwestern states, resulting from equal chances to above-normal probability of higher temperatures and equal chances to below-normal probability for precipitation,” federal meteorologists wrote in Wednesday’s update.

Fears are there for the Colorado River, too: If soil is dry as snow begins to melt, it will retain water that would have otherwise flowed into Lake Powell. Hotter temperatures also speed up evapotranspiration, or the process by which soil moisture is lost to the atmosphere.

David Simeral, a climatologist who works for the Desert Research Institute and the Western Regional Climate Center, said it would take upward of five wet years in the Colorado River Basin for reservoir levels to stabilize.

“Having a good year here and there helps put a Band-Aid on things,” Simeral said.

With the West trending hotter and drier, water managers will face hard decisions in the near future, he said.

“We fortunately can get these fluctuations with seasons where we can make some pretty good recovery,” Simeral said. “In terms of the larger reservoir situation with Lake Mead and Lake Powell: Those are not issues that can be resolved within a season or two.”

Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.