Incredible satellite images show how Lake Mead, believed to be headed for disastrously low water levels, has risen 14 meters in recent months due to historic winter storms.
Located on the border of Utah and Arizona, Lake Powell is part of a system that supplies water to 40 million people in several western states, and supplies power to more than five million people through the Glen Canyon Dam.
Earlier this year, experts said it was unlikely to refill in the next 50 years after drought caused it to reach its lowest level in decades.
Over the past year, however, Lake Powell has risen about 13.85 feet, with photos from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus SENTINAL-2 satellites capturing the dramatic rise.
The elevation of the reservoir changed from 3520.81 feet to 3584.02 feet — about a 20-foot difference, according to the Lake Powell Water Database.
Incredible satellite images show how Lake Mead, believed to be headed for disastrously low water levels, has risen 14 meters in recent months due to historic winter storms. Shows the difference between the image taken on March 18 (left photo) and July 16 (right photo)
The rise in water levels has been attributed to a historic winter season of storms, where snow was 160 percent of normal levels and melted into dams that emptied into the Colorado River, according to ABC 4.
Snow levels broke 40-year-old records in Utah, with a snow-water equivalent of 30 inches, which began just before the satellite began photographing the passage of time.
The amount of snow allowed the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to unleash water through the Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell, helping downstream Lake Mead.
The downside is that a summer with drastic heat waves has caused water levels to drop again.
Both lakes are huge — Lake Mead can store more than 27 million acre-feet of water, and Lake Powell up to 25 million acre-feet of water — but experts suspect both giant lakes won’t fill up again any time soon.
Based on the low levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University, told The Los Angeles Times he estimates that refilling the reservoirs would take about six consecutive extremely wet years, with water flows similar to those seen in 2011.
“It would take us about six years to refill this system in a row, based on current operating rules,” Udall said. “And I just don’t even remotely see that as possible.”
The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada was significant in Northern California, but those storms didn’t have much of an impact on the long-lasting mega-drought that the Colorado River Basin has.
The Colorado River basin is a critical source of supply for Southern California.
This May 17 satellite image shows the impact of winter storms on Lake Powell
Earlier this year, experts said it was unlikely to refill in the next 50 years after drought pushed it to its lowest level in decades
The rise in water levels at Lake Powell can be attributed to the historic 2022/23 winter season
A bathtub ring that can be seen above the waterline around Lake Powell was created during drought that reduced Colorado River flow in Lake Powell on April 15, 2023.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Lake Mead, located on the border between Arizona and Nevada and formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, was filled.
In 2000, the lake was close to its maximum capacity, but a massive drought in recent decades has thrown the river into crisis. Scientists claim that a water shortage over the past 23 years has drained Lake Mead as much as 70 percent.
Udall, who co-authored research showing how the warming of the river is depleting streams, told The Los Angeles Times “to think that these things would ever fill again takes a kind of leap of faith that I don’t have, for example.’
“The last 23 years are the best lessons we have right now, and they should scare people off,” he said.
Lake Powell, located in northern Arizona and extending into southern Utah, has dropped to just 23 percent of full capacity and is approaching a point where the Glen Canyon Dam would no longer generate power, the news outlet reported.
While the Rocky Mountains have already been hit by above-average snow cover this winter, scientists and water officials believe those in the Colorado River Basin should prepare for low reservoir levels for years to come.
Lake Powell, located in northern Arizona and extending into southern Utah, has fallen to just 23 percent of full capacity and is approaching the point where Glen Canyon Dam would no longer generate power
While the Rocky Mountains have already been hit by above-average snow cover this winter, scientists and water officials believe those in the Colorado River basin should prepare for low reservoir levels for years to come
While others believe the river’s main reservoirs will not be filled in “our lifetime,” the news outlet reported.
Bill Hasencamp, manager of Colorado River resources for the Metropolitan Water District in Southern California SFGate that there was less ‘demand for water’ in the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties.
“There was no Central Arizona Project, there was no Southern Nevada Water Authority, there was not nearly as much use in the Upper (Colorado River) Basin,” he said. ‘So the water consumption was low. So that filled the storage.’
He said demand for water increased in the late 1990s and early 2000s.’
According to experts, California uses most of the river. Arizona started in the late 1990s and Nevada in the early 2000s — and now experts say “water use is maxed out,” the news outlet reported.
Hasencamp said, ‘every state is taking too much, and we have to cut back. And so there just isn’t enough.’
He predicted that even if you get ‘wet year’ after ‘wet year’ the demand is so high it still wouldn’t be able to be filled.’
The river’s flow has declined by about 20 percent over the past 23 years, due in part to rising temperatures and climate change, scientists say.
Cracked earth is visible in an area that was once under the water of Lake Mead in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area Friday, January 27, 2023, near Boulder City, Nev. Amid a major drought in the western U.S., a proposed solution is emerging repeatedly: large-scale river diversions, including pumping Mississippi River water into parched states
A bird stands in the water among trash and debris as a ‘bathtub ring’ is visible during low water levels due to the western drought on July 19, 2021 at the Lake Mead Marina on the Colorado River in Boulder City, Nevad
Average temperatures in the upper watershed — where most of the river’s flow originates — have risen about 3 degrees since 1970, which researchers attribute to global warming.
For every additional 1 degree Celsius — 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit — the river’s average flow rate is likely to decrease by about nine percent, research has shown.
Scientists have revealed – based on a number of studies – that by the middle of this century the river’s average flow rate could be 30 to 40 percent lower than the average for the past century.
Compared to Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the other two reservoirs in California and small by comparison, Lake Shasta which holds about 4.6 million acre feet, and Lake Oroville holds 3.5 million acre feet.