Lake Powell slipping below 2006 levels
At the moment, it is almost exactly half full, measuring by capacity. Its storage on June 30, the end of the water year, is predicted to be 48 percent.
Metaphorically, the giant reservoir in southern Utah and northern Arizona is half empty because it still hasn't recovered from the drought that started in 1999. And it's half full because, according to federal experts, reservoirs like it are helping Westerners through the dusty years.
Tom Ryan, hydrologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Upper Colorado Region, pointed out that a scant spring runoff this year means the enormous reservoir will be about 94 feet below its full level on July 1. At 3,606 feet above sea level, that's around five feet lower than it was at the same time the previous year.
"The good news is we've got a lot of storage (water) in the Colorado River system, designed to carry us through droughts like this," he added. "The system's working as intended. We're weathering a very severe, multiyear drought."
Lake Powell is among a multitude of rivers, lakes and reservoirs throughout the West that are experiencing a snowmelt season that is far skimpier than normal.
It cited Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California and eastern Oregon as having "extremely low" snowpacks. There, it adds, "some sites ... had already melted out" by April 1.
"This is also true in California's Sierra Nevada and should result in a very poor spring and summer stream flow and runoff," it said.
Fortunately, it added, reservoir storage is above average in California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Washington "and only slightly below normal in Oregon and Utah, providing some cushion from the expected poor 2007 stream flow and runoff forecast."
Arizona, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming reservoirs are below their normal level, however.
The only exception to the dry conditions is in the Great Plains. There, Reclamation Commissioner Robert Johnson said, initial reports "indicate a spring that is more normal and wetter than what the region has faced in past years. The state of Oklahoma is drought-free for the first time since 2005. ... "
The half-full perspective is that Utah's water storage is not in bad shape; the half-empty view is that runoff into Lake Powell is projected to be only 53 percent of normal, causing the lake to lose a couple feet of elevation by the end of the water year.
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