Past the peak and a post-mortem...

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SeaLegs said:
Sounds like fascism to me.
"You will enjoy meat as a treat, but not for sustenance"
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Is it fascism that going to an expensive 5 star restaurant is a treat, not daily sustenance.?

Same concept.

Beef is expensive, to produce resource wise. If I recall correctly, gallons to calories, beef is about double the water too produce vs dairy and triple that of other meats like pork and chicken.

If the differences in resources showed up proportionally in the end user cost at the grocery store, it would be treated like a sometimes food. But beef production is subsidized to the moon and back, so that reality gets hidden from Joe Public.

And if you put a dollar value on our water that properly accounts for how scarce it is in the Southwest, you'd see that beef farming is simply bad budgeting.

I, for one, would rather eat a turkey burger than run out of Colorado River.
 
Cheef Baconator said:
Is it fascism that going to an expensive 5 star restaurant is a treat, not daily sustenance.?

Same concept.

Beef is expensive, to produce resource wise. If I recall correctly, gallons to calories, beef is about double the water too produce vs dairy and triple that of other meats like pork and chicken.

If the differences in resources showed up proportionally in the end user cost at the grocery store, it would be treated like a sometimes food. But beef production is subsidized to the moon and back, so that reality gets hidden from Joe Public.

And if you put a dollar value on our water that properly accounts for how scarce it is in the Southwest, you'd see that beef farming is simply bad budgeting.

I, for one, would rather eat a turkey burger than run out of Colorado River.
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Cows are inefficient converting intake calories to food, use a ton of water and their poop is a big problem. Not to mention bad for your health if you eat a lot of beef. Not saying I don’t like good steak, but it should be a treat, not a daily staple.
 
Cheef Baconator said:
Is it fascism that going to an expensive 5 star restaurant is a treat, not daily sustenance.?

Same concept.

Beef is expensive, to produce resource wise. If I recall correctly, gallons to calories, beef is about double the water too produce vs dairy and triple that of other meats like pork and chicken.

If the differences in resources showed up proportionally in the end user cost at the grocery store, it would be treated like a sometimes food. But beef production is subsidized to the moon and back, so that reality gets hidden from Joe Public.

And if you put a dollar value on our water that properly accounts for how scarce it is in the Southwest, you'd see that beef farming is simply bad budgeting.

I, for one, would rather eat a turkey burger than run out of Colorado River.
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It was never hidden from Joe Public. There has been water wars and grazing wars for beef production for the last couple centurys!!!! Its not a secret. If you're fine with a turkey burger, so be it! That doesn't mean the rest of us are. And as far as the southwestern/food production for water usage is concerned,,,,, yes it takes water,,,,,,, but the yields all year long need to be taken into account.
Go ahead and get the water squeezed down in the southwest, talk to us in in a year when your paying triple for your veggies, chicken and such. Then look at every label and see from what country it's coming from,,,,,,,, it won't be from the Uited States!!!
 
CATD8RII said:
It was never hidden from Joe Public. There has been water wars and grazing wars for beef production for the last couple centurys!!!! Its not a secret. If you're fine with a turkey burger, so be it! That doesn't mean the rest of us are. And as far as the southwestern/food production for water usage is concerned,,,,, yes it takes water,,,,,,, but the yields all year long need to be taken into account.
Go ahead and get the water squeezed down in the southwest, talk to us in in a year when your paying triple for your veggies, chicken and such. Then look at every label and see from what country it's coming from,,,,,,,, it won't be from the Uited States!!!
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And that's why we're dealing with a water crisis for the umpteenth time in a row. We'll never have security over our own resources until we learn to conserve them properly.
 
So it's safe to say that turkey and chicken are the answer because they dont use as much water. Do you know how many turkey and chicken farms are in the southwest?? And what about wheat to make the buns for your turkey sammiches, and onions and tomatoes and lettuce and spinach and garlic???????? Tomatoes for your ketchup,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Really,,, you would need to deeply investigate how much water these big cities are taking,,,,,,, just to be a city. No benefit other than housing and business. SanDiego and LA have so many dams that are in disrepair for multiple decades that when a huge rainstorm comes, they have to let the water out for fear of a "dam disaster". So then they make focus that the southwestern farmers are the water wasters!!!!!!!! They grow our food for Christ's sake!!!! Powell and Mead were never built for recreation. They were built for flood control and holding back water for electric production and for farming and gor home use. Recreation is a side effect from it. You need to look at all aspects, except just focusing on what media says who is at fault.
 
DVexile said:
Technically the fat lady has not left the stage, but unless she goes off script from the libretto, that was in fact the peak a few days ago. There was some hope that the Flaming Gorge release might bump the lake up a bit higher than it got on June 18th, but it appears that will not happen:

View attachment 33066
Here is the forecast inflow for the next few days. If we integrate up everything in the curve we get a rise of just 0.06 foot from where we sit today. And today we are already 0.09 foot below the June 18th peak. So we will see a second little bump and the Flaming Gorge release will stave off the decline for a few more days creating a broader peak than we would have had otherwise, but the lake won't get any higher than it was on the 18th. And by the Fourth of July we will be falling by about 0.15 foot per day.

Of course these discussions of things less than 0.1 feet means we are literally talking about lake elevations changes of around one inch! How many angels on the head of pin kind of stuff. It isn't a good year, that's the take away.

Steadily underperforming the forecasts...

This chart tells the story pretty well:

View attachment 33067


The February, March, and April official most probable inflow forecasts (April-Jul) were all 4300 kaf. In early April the unofficial daily most probable forecast got as high as 4688 kaf. Today's estimate is 2778 kaf, or only about 65% of the official forecast in April.

But it is important to remember just how much uncertainty there are in these forecasts and this is reflected in the forecasts themselves. It is natural to feel that in April we should have a pretty good handle on how good a year we are going to have, after all the snowpack is at its peak by the start of April! But the runoff isn't all about just the snowpack.

In April with 10-90% forecast range was 3150 kaf to 6600 kaf. That's a huge range! It's equivalent to almost 50 feet of lake elevation! And remember, we should expect to fall outside that range in one out of every five years! That's worth stating again in bold I think:

Even when the peak snowpack is known exactly there is still at least 50 feet of lake elevation of uncertainty in the runoff forecasting!!!

Well, this was one of the ten years we'd expect to fall outside the lowest range of estimates made in April. On April 1 the low end was 3150 kaf and right now it looks like we will get around 2800 kaf. That's about five feet of lake elevation below the "minimum probable" back in April. Even with that 50 foot range we fell another five feet outside it!

It's been interesting!

Anyway, I became morbidly interested in this year's runoff a few months ago when I became curious about what was going to make this year different from the dread 2021. That year had a big forecast miss as well. This year the snow pack was similar and the climate was quite dry, but in theory the forecasting tools know that better than me! So I've been entertaining myself, and hopefully at least a few people here at the same time, crunching some numbers and watching how things developed.

Certainly while 2024-25 was dry and warm and caused a lot of snow to never make it to the lake as runoff it wasn't nearly as dry and warm as 2020-21. So thankfully this year wasn't nearly as bad and shouldn't have been expected to be as bad. If we'd had a repeat of 2021 we'd be about another 13 feet lower than we are!

But I am super curious now about what all gets integrated into the forecast tools. Until I started paying attention to this I didn't fully appreciate just how little we actually know even when we have perfect information on the snow pack. I presume a lot of the soil and vegetation water deficits are included in the forecast tools, but either I'm wrong about that, or those estimates are still very uncertain, or there is still a huge impact of weather after April that can cause such a wide range of outcomes.

Fingers crossed next year is a lot better for the lake!
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Great work, not to dilute it to the lowest common denominator but I'm on a beach at Powell in my houseboat and the lake seems to be receding supporting that we are past the peak. I beached abound 9:00 am and by 6:00 pm I was letting out line and backing it up. Kinda shocked by that, big power demand day I guess
 
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bubba said:
Folks



One thing that impacts and reduces spring runoff is mid winter wind, hot wind to be more specific. Hot days will slowly melt the top snow layer with the layers below absorbing most of the water.



Hot wind will strip the top layer so fast you can literally watch the snow level drop. High wind with warm temps can turn a hill brown in no time. The hot dry wind has a lot of energy.



This past winter we had several weeks of very warm temps with very high winds at altitude.



The hot wind melt off this past Jan / Feb was sending more water direct into the sky than into the ground.



There is not a chance in hell that the lake will ever be intentionally drained, but there is a big chance it will drop to its emergency levels that force an agreement calibration to equal outflow to be less than in flow.



Call it what you want, things are in play that are delivering a different result. There is a pattern and the pattern is climate related. Focus on the pattern. Understand the pattern. Understand what causes the pattern. Understand what reverse or slows the pattern. Be curious.



Right now it is the extended periods of very warm high winds in the middle of the winter that is stripping the water right off the mountain. If you believe in science this is called sublimation - a very exciting process (google sublimation phase transition). If you do not believe in science, then it is magic, the snow just disappears.



There was a lot of snow in the Colorado range ready to flow to Powell that never turned to water, it got sucked into the sky as vapor. During hot windy winter months it may be possible the lake is losing more water to sublimation on the upper range than to absorption and evaporation.



I think the easiest way to get rid of the agreement is to simple let the lake get so low that no water can be released. Allow this forced natural condition to present an emergency opportunity to void the agreement. It will also be a good time to evaluate what is grown, I am all for being self sufficient, but lets be smart, lets buy crops from other areas that can grow them more efficiently and at a lower price. Let’s use our water for things that we cannot buy on the open market.




I would imagine that the USA makes more money in innovation technology and finance markets than in agriculture. Our exports are based on intellect not sun and water - it might be a good time to buy almonds from areas where they grow naturally, etc.




Folks, focus on the patterns and be curious.





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Well said Bubba!

When a solid goes to an invisible vapor it does literally disappear. (Sublimation or it Sublimates) Solar radiation AKA Sunshine causes the snow to go straight from a frozen solid state into water vapor; it never melts into liquid water. Instead, it skips the liquid state and eventual evaporation; Instead it goes straight into a vapor. If you live in snow country and you see the berm the plow makes on your street shrink but you didn't see any water running away from it that was sublimation.

With evaporation it was a liquid that became a vapor but both the solid and the liquid end up as invisible vapor. Most people think steam off a tea kettle is water vapor, it's not, water vapor is invisible. What you witnessed was water disappearing into vapor
 
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CATD8RII said:
SanDiego and LA have so many dams that are in disrepair for multiple decades that when a huge rainstorm comes, they have to let the water out for fear of a "dam disaster". So then they make focus that the southwestern farmers are the water wasters!!!!!!!! They grow our food for Christ's sake!!!! Powell and Mead were never built for recreation. They were built for flood control and holding back water for electric production and for farming and gor home use. Recreation is a side effect from it. You need to look at all aspects, except just focusing on what media says who is at fault.
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I'm not going to get into the issues associated with crop production and where we are sending water to make it happen, but I wanted to dispel this perception of the purposes of the dams in SD and LA and the current state. They were not meant to capture long term volumes of water, but serve as flood mitigation for some coastal areas and allow some storage for municipal purposes. The volumes of stormwater have increased as has the intensity of storms, which has resulted in the need to push water out of the system in advance of these storms since even the best designed and maintained dam cannot deal with excess water that would result in overtopping the dam, much like the issues in 1983 with the excess water condition at Glen Canyon Dam, which would potentially lead to the dam being completely washed out. Capture of these massive flows we have seen recently for use in the water supply plan is not part of the system intention and the location of these flows would not really allow that to happen without massive significant investment and huge power costs to deliver the water to where it is needed.
 
CATD8RII said:
So it's safe to say that turkey and chicken are the answer because they dont use as much water. Do you know how many turkey and chicken farms are in the southwest?? And what about wheat to make the buns for your turkey sammiches, and onions and tomatoes and lettuce and spinach and garlic???????? Tomatoes for your ketchup,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Really,,, you would need to deeply investigate how much water these big cities are taking,,,,,,, just to be a city. No benefit other than housing and business. SanDiego and LA have so many dams that are in disrepair for multiple decades that when a huge rainstorm comes, they have to let the water out for fear of a "dam disaster". So then they make focus that the southwestern farmers are the water wasters!!!!!!!! They grow our food for Christ's sake!!!! Powell and Mead were never built for recreation. They were built for flood control and holding back water for electric production and for farming and gor home use. Recreation is a side effect from it. You need to look at all aspects, except just focusing on what media says who is at fault.
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All agriculture takes water. There's no getting around that. But some agriculture takes a whole helluva lot more water than others, and that's where the problems are.

And the water used by cities is a drop in the bucket compared to just the alfalfa that gets exported to Saudi Arabia. Residential use is so insignificant it's only worth counting for posterity, and industrial use is still pretty insignificant.
 
If the alfalfa farmer will pay $.00001 per gallon and the city of St. George will pay $.001 per gallon then there might soon be some transfers going on. And your alfalfa will likely come from somewhere besides Utah and Arizona.
 
tt600 said:
If the alfalfa farmer will pay $.00001 per gallon and the city of St. George will pay $.001 per gallon then there might soon be some transfers going on. And your alfalfa will likely come from somewhere besides Utah and Arizona.
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If the water wasting crop is coming from a place without a water scarcity problem, what's the issue?
 
CATD8RII said:
Then the the proposed pipeline to St. George shouldn't be an issue?
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I believe they want the water for agricultural use also not just the residents. (in theory)

Utah has the right to the water but they can't take it without some infrastructure like Arizona has with the CAP. It's really just posturing as things heat up in the water battles. They want to exert their right, kinda like use it or loose it. I think that's their fear and probably rightly so
 
Marina Bum said:
Utah has the right to the water but they can't take it without some infrastructure like Arizona has with the CAP.
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At the risk of being pedantic, the upper basin states have the right to what is left over. There isn’t any left over for St. George at this point.

The compact says the lower basin gets 7.5 Maf and the upper gets what is left over. Utah gets 23% of that left over amount.

2000-23 average Colorado flow is 12.5 Maf leaving 5 Maf for the upper basin. Utah’s share would be about 1 Maf. That’s what Utah is drawing already. So it’s a pipeline to nowhere kind of project.

Which I think reinforces your larger point, they are posturing for the coming allocation fight more than anything. It isn’t a practical real world solution at all, but planning for it might still be a political and negotiation lever.
 
I believe St George gets their water from the Virgin River. There’s plenty of farmers along the Virgin who will sell their rights for the right price, if allowed to. I know Las Vegas has bought Virgin River rights from farmers for big $$$$.
Article talks about buying and selling water rights in NV.
grist.org

The little-known Nevada company making millions off the Western water shortage

A small Nevada company, Vidler Water Resources, spent decades buying water. As the West dries up, it’s cashing out.
grist.org grist.org
 
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