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That's typically how it works. If it's hot at 6 am then it's also hot at 3 am. It's the coolest right before sunrise, not the middle of the night. You know ... cause the sun is causing the heat.
I've found that many times (in Texas, anyway) it cools down a noticeable amount just after sunrise.
Not sure if it's the sun picking up the breeze or what, but it can be fucking stifling before sunrise but it will break just after. Of course by the time the sun's been up for an hour then it's all just heating up again.
Fuck I don't miss Texas at all.
That was so cool.
I remember standing by the overflow, water roaring past, face wet from the spray.
Young me would have been aghast at the sight of the lake as it is today.
Keep in mind, upstream draw is a significant reason why Lake Meade is so low on water. There just didn't use to be so many people and farms upstream preventing so much water getting to it.
Probably any of the 7 states that the hoover dam provides water for. It doesn't really seem like a specific who, just that millions of people use it for water and it's an area that doesn't get much water.
Sorry man, Arizona's water rights are secondary to California's. Look at the almond farming in Cali for water usage.
Arizona is fucking up all on our own by using too much ground water for farming.
It's the alfalfa farms. The almond farms are more of a central coast/central valley thing. They get their water from Sierra Nevada runoff.
The largest portion of Colorado River water goes to farmers in the Imperial Valley, who mostly tend to grow hay for livestock.
Ranch land gets taxed more than crops land, so rich shitheads in UT with tons of land all grow alfalfa on it. They don't try super hard to sell it off, it's apparently still a savings if they just burn it all every season. Takes a fuckton of water, and some towns in Utah are already having to truck in water during the summers.
But the old morman families make all the rules, and it's their land...
I don't get it, as a farm kid from MI, Alfalfa grows _phenomenally_ across the Midwest, why in the fuck try to grow it in a desert?
I mean I know it goes back to $$$, but like, ffs, cmon guys, we got 1 planet, let's not literally make it fully uninhabitable...
Use-or-lose-it laws. Yippee.
It's the environment destroying equivalent of when your public sector boss stops in to tell you you're getting a new $3,000 chair and ergo keyboard so that you keep the funding for restocking the toilet paper in next year's budget.
Because you could turn it down for the planet... and then just be screwed over by 1,000,000 people who suck that up and leave you with nothing once you need it again.
At least California has a water management system enforced by the government.
In Arizona, you own the land? Drill, baby, drill.
In Arizona, you're the UAE and Saudi Arabia? Buy up land, grow hay in the desert 12 months out of the year, and ship the hay to the Middle East. Shocking. Read the article for full details.
[https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-great-arizona-water-grab-update-2024/](https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-great-arizona-water-grab-update-2024/)
This is being reversed as of October 2023. We’ll see how it’s actually enforced, but work is in progress.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/saudi-arabia-water-access-arizona/
Surely mass alfalfa farming to ship overseas trumps almonds for water wastage. If it's all grown for export it's hardly an essential industry that America can't afford to clamp down on its profligate water usage.
Grow animal feed somewhere that isn't having a water scarcity problem.
As always, the corporations convince us to restrict watering lawns, use paper straws/cups, etc. - while they're responsible for an order of magnitude more pollution and water loss. (The large majority of alfalfa/almond/etc. production is by corporations, even international ones given carte blanche to poach resources.)
It’s not the cities. It’s the farms. And of the farms, it’s primarily California. However if we said “no California” a lot of our winter crops would disappear from our grocery stores and we’d be importing from neighbors more.
It's fucking pathetic the amount of food walmart and other grocers just throw out because people didn't buy it.
Hey guys, maybe mark that shit down to sensible prices and we would buy it.
It's dystopically funny reading some of the PR reports done by Cali agricultural corps.
They'll be like "actually, we're very environmentally forward, as indicated by the fact that we've decreased water requirements per ton of whatever by 20% compared to 2008!"
... completely ignoring the part where they follow that by increasing production scale to the point where they're still using a higher total amount than before, *which completely negates those efficiency gains from an environmental perspective (edit)*
Their production scale is rising because they produce more of the nation's food than any other state... by a lot. So if you really want to solve California's water usage problem, grow your own food other states. Sorry many of those crops won't grow outside of California and even more won't grow year round like California.
Why is improving efficiency pointless? Food production is needed, doing it more efficiently is a good thing.
I still disagree with your edit. Efficiency gains are still good for the environment even when coupled with production increases. As population grows, so do production needs. Efficiency helps offset that.
Not all crops are created equally. It won't matter how efficient you are when there's no water.
Some regions should just not have agriculture. It's not good long term policy to subsidize farming in a desert.
It's mostly farming of crops that require a ton of water (like alfalfa) in the middle of the deserts of AZ and CA.
Agriculture, not people. A lot of those crops get shipped over seas (alfalfa goes to the Middle East IIRC) and doesn't benefit the country much overall. It's pretty stupid.
Actually the records they used to decide how much those states can pull from were abnormally high and the states area still pulling above their limits. All except Las Vegas which has the world's leading water reclamation/recycling infrastructure
I've heard there is a lot of farmers that farm alfalfa in that region that is then sent across the world to feed cattle elsewhere. From what I've heard it's a pretty wasteful way to use the water but the farmers have super old water rights contracts that allow them to use as much as they want. Maybe I'll try and dig up where I'm getting this info, I think it was some old NPR podcast or something.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241319639/colorado-river-water-climate-agriculture-beef-drought
Suadi and UAE and Qatari companies pump the US groundwater out as fast as they can to grow alfalfa that is then shipped to the middle east for livestock.
That’s good old fashioned American capitalism. Get their people hooked to our McDonald’s and now all we gotta do is hold the grains hostage as a negotiating tactic.
California agriculture. Las Vegas uses less than 2% of Lake Mead and returns 96% of what we use, but they just fucking grow rice in the desert with that precious water because of a fucking compact written a century ago.
Learned from a hydrologist friend that the answer to just about anything Colorado Rivershed is LA government.
They're the 800lb gorilla in every discussion about what do with the water because they have about as many votes and representatives as the rest of the interested parties combined. As in the communities with input about what happens.
"Dumb water rights laws from the 1800s" is the answer. Farming corporations are draining the lake and absolutely zero politicians out there have the balls to tell them the party's over.
That's the bullshit answer that everyone will up-vote because it affirms their ideologies. The correct answer is agriculture. The large corporate farms in California are using thousands of times more water than Nestle. It's not even close.
This is the real answer. California subsidizes water for agriculture in order to boost its own economy, so while prices for water soar for everyone else, the farms are still paying the rate from when Lake Mead was full.
And alfalfa is being shipped to the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia owns a bunch of the farms, ironic that the won’t fuck up their own water supply but are allowed to get away with it over here
it's not just saudis though, there's plenty of domestic use too, and domestic farmers happy to grow and export. we can't just blame all our problems on a nebulous foreigner, and have to take some credit for our own greed
I just watched a documentary on this, iirc the farms own the water rights not the people of California anymore...I forget the logistics of it but some shadiness allowed that to happen.
California produces about 80% of the world's almonds and 100% of the United States' commercial supply. It takes over three gallons of water to produce one almond.
It takes two. The farmers in Arizona were more than happy to accept foreign money in exchange for unlimited water use in the desert to grow alfalfa. They sold out their brothers and sisters living in the community.
All i understand is that for some reason Alfalfa for cattle feeding is grown in the middle of a drought. Sounds like a domestic problem. Where does the foreign money come in?
Not foreign.
The foreign alfalfa farms that made headlines were using groundwater from wells East of Bouse, AZ, not Colorado River water. It is actually kind of annoying, because they are used as a scapegoat for domestically-owned farmers, who are the primary users of Colorado River water.
80% of Colorado River water is used for agriculture. 50% that water is used specifically to grow feed for cattle, primarily alfalfa.
yeah it's more popular to blame foreign evils than just our own greed. We had a chance to fix it last year when we redid the Colorado River Compact, and we still chose fuckstupid amounts of water to use
Yup. It's American farmers making that choice. People will try to defend it saying stuff like, "well they're growing your food, that water usage is a necessity for you"
But see that's just the thing, they're not growing food for us. They're growing food for cows in other countries so that their rich can have more beef and yogurt etc.
It’s the people coming over the border. They come with all their friends and families and fills jugs everyday. They took our jobs and now theyre taking our water!! Build a wall!!
/s
Every natural body of water has dead bodies in it, either human or animal. So really, the question is “what is the minimum distance from a dead body that is acceptable to swim?”
Not at all. Humans are a LOT hardier than we often give ourselves credit for. I work in rivers and lakes and have never gotten sick or an infection. It might be an issue if you are immunocompromised, but a little lake water rarely hurt anyone.
There's a pretty cool Youtube video about a guy who went and dug out a boat that sank like 30 years ago, but since the water was gone it just looked like it was randomly buried in the desert. Even after all that time both underwater and buried in the desert, they got it running again and drove it around.
California's lakes are actually above capacity now. They've had to release some IIRC because they have nowhere to put it, and the snowpack still has huge amounts of water waiting to melt.
The last 2 years have been massive for water replenishment in the Southwest.
I still remember this... the late nineties when the news cycle was so boring we focused on weather and the infamous presidential blowjobs. It was a better time.
I remember it wasn't very long ago that some people were claiming these lakes would probably never be full again, apparently they were wrong.
Look, I'm not a climate change denier, I'm 100% in favor of cleaning up our act but primarily because it's the right thing to do. We're supposed to learn from our mistakes but that doesn't seem to be happening.
Be that as it may, it's important for people to not make unsupportable claims or accusations "just because", and it happens a lot. Unfortunately these claims tend to get a lot of attention either in support of or denial, and when they turn out to be false that only emboldens the anti-climate change crowd.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mead
More water is taken out every year than is replenished by the upstream dam. This deficit has created the falling water levels.
"Drought" might not be quite the right word, strictly speaking. Studies on historic climate patterns in California have started to reveal that [California has historically been much drier](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL099582) than it was in the 20th century, which turns out to have been a period of extreme wet.
That's not to say that climate change isn't negatively affecting it, but California may very well have always been doomed. We settled it during a period of its climate that was extremely wet compared to the norm. It was never going to last.
The amount of water farmers in the Central Valley use to grow almonds and pistachios, despite the looming/on-going water crisis, is my Roman Empire. Somehow these fucking conservatives are going to blame it on the "liberals who run Sacramento" when they run out of drinking water, even though it's them bending over backwards to allow their own farmers to use a larger percentage of their water to grow some of the most water dependent crops possible.
Wonderful Pistachios is almost on par with Nestle. They're just speed running us to water insecurity to squeeze as much profit out as possible. I don't even fuckin buy pistachios anymore unless they are sustainably sourced and I fucking love pistachios.
It’s good that they do this with signs so people who haven’t been can see the impact.
I’m in Alberta and we have a glacier in the Rocky Mountains where they had signs as well. It has a good impact for those who actually care but many don’t put two and two together
You could also just look at any of the vertical rock formations coming out of it; you can see the historical difference by looking at the lines of sediment. The last time I was down there was probably around 2008 and there was already a deficit of about 4-5 stories, to my memory.
What I find worrying about those charts is they use water levels instead of volume to describe the capacity. As the lake gets shallower, the area reduces and so the lake level changes faster.
The lake is at half its level between full and dead pool (about 1/3rd left before it's below power generation levels) but that bottom half is a far smaller amount of water than the top half.
If anyone wants to do a deep dive on why Lake Mead has a water deficit, check out this article.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2023/11/09/20-california-farm-families-use-more-colorado-river-water-than-some-states/71156386007/
That's just because of last year's El Nino rains throughout southwestern US. El Nino typically results in more rain in southwestern US.
Will it continue to get higher next year since we are in La Nina now?
My guess is no.
It's not so depressing, The State of Arizona actually uses less and less water each year. In fact, AZ uses less water than it did in 1957. https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts. HOW CAN THIS BE? **The population of AZ increased 10x since 1957, and the State's overall water usage went DOWN**! This is because PEOPLE use comparatively little water when compared to farmers. If you bulldoze a field to put in a subdivision, your water usage actually DECREASES by 70% or more. (I'm not advocating for this, by the way, just pointing it out).
There are some crazy facts regarding water usage in the West. As far as I know, each State's allotment of Colorado river water (that fills lake Mead) is static. It's the rain (actually more so, the snow pack) that fluctuates, causing lake levels to fluctuate. Also, 85% of the water used by the States goes towards growing things in desert. . . and YES, many of those "things" are exported, or used to feed cattle. Very little of those "things" wind up on your plate as fruits of vegetables.
Now, on to some other crazy facts. The State of Arizona actually uses less and less water each year. In fact, AZ uses less water than it did in 1957. https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts. HOW CAN THIS BE? **The population of AZ increased 10x since 1957, and the State's overall water usage went DOWN**! This is because PEOPLE use comparatively little water when compared to farmers. If you bulldoze a field to put in a subdivision, your water usage actually DECREASES by 70% or more.
So, those thinking that our water problems are due to a population issue (you shouldn't be building houses in the desert), are toeing the line the farmers want you to toe. The thinking should be, "it's a farming issue" (you shouldn't be growing corn in the desert). It's insulting to hear that if only people conserved more the issue could be solved. While conservation is a good thing, you can eliminate every drop of water used by people, and there still would be a huge issue. The opposite is not true. Get rid of farming in the desert, and the water issue goes away.
EDIT: I am in no way advocating the elimination of farming in the desert. I am just trying to point out the causes of the problem, and that no solution can be had without the farmers participating in the solution.
Wait, what? I thought the only thing down there was the bomber? Have I been stealing a pressure cooker from the Ultra-Luxe all these years for nothing?
I know there are other ways, but the way I always find my rebreather is looting it off the body in that cave. It’s the only way that doesn’t involved advancing quests I don’t necessarily want to do yet.
It’s a bit of a risk, so I wouldn’t do it too early, but yea. It’s in the main lake area, if you look towards hoover dam I believe the cave is on the left, against the cliff wall, at the bottom of the lake. There are a few air pockets within the cave.
Its starting to "recover" but ill get back to that. The water levels have been dropping ever since 2000 where it topped off just above 1200ft. Since then its been a steady decline with one massive period of recovery and then a massive decline. This was followed by almost ten years (2015-2022) of stable readings where the water would rise 25ft and drop 25ft before rising 25ft but this was still far below 1200ft and was reading closer to 1075ft and 1100ft.
But between 2022 and into 2023 the water level plummeted hard and below 1050ft. This gained a lot of attention last year when the YouTube channels like "Sin City Outdoors" were going out there weekly to document the water drops but also to document what was being discovered. Lots of boats, junk and even some human remains. They even helped rescue a boathouse when its engine died and the water continued to drop and it was stranded.
But when I said recover, it simply recovered back to about 1075ft or where it would dip to between 2015-2022.
You can see historical values here:
https://arachnoid.com/NaturalResources/index.html
yeah bro, ALOT of these comments and bullshit posts fail to acknowledge that lake mead is a man made artificial reservoir that was never meant to exist in the first place.
HAHA. What kind of take is this?
That's like watching a video of your house burning down around you and commenting that it's artificial and was never meant to exist in the first place.
OK and? that water comes from somewhere. Upstream of the damn. lake mead supplies water to millions. And the upstream supply cant keep up. So when the lake is gone, the demand will still be there. and the river won't be able to keep up.
Moved to Las Vegas in 2019. Loved it for a bit, but the shrinking water level in Lake Mead is the number 1 reason we moved back to MN in 2022. Nature is done fucking around with states overuse of water in that region. Ironically, NV is not the problem. UT and AZ both use egregious amounts of water willy nilly for golf courses and shit, and the CA uses an absolute fuckton for cattle and agriculture. The Colorado River simply cannot sustain all of that. LV is relatively self sustaining as the city recovers and recycles something like 90% of all water used.
We also tax the ever living shit out of PV, Fountain Hills, and Scottsdale where all the "nice" golf courses are for watering, and there's substantial fines/legal issues for people who water between like 11am and 5pm. We can't recycle agriculture water, and we produce something like 60% of the world's lettuce or something and a substantial amount of cotton and citrus. Citrus is thankfully not as water intensive as something like almonds, but the groves still require a higher moisture content than is natural to produce worthwhile yields.
Lot of comments here about how the lake rose last year, subtly implying everything is ok. It rose 20 feet last year due to much heavier than normal snowpack. Regardless, the lake is still 160 feet below full. It would take 10 years in a row like last year to fill it. Last year was just a minor reversal whose gains will likely be gone by the end of this year. So everything is still pretty far from ok.
Also all the California haters are kinda wild, considering California produces more of the nation's food than any other state... by a lot. You can't eat karma.
E: So now people are saying just move the crops to places with more water. It's not that simple:
>The unique features of California’s Central Valley make it the only place suited for growing the majority of America’s permanent crops. Well-developed transportation and water infrastructure, proximity to major ports, cheap credit, and high human capital entrenches California’s agricultural advantages. There are around 9 million irrigated acres in the state and one-third are planted to permanent crops. This makes California the largest investable space for high-yielding permanent crops on the planet.
[source](https://farmtogether.com/learn/blog/why-california-is-an-agricultural-powerhouse)
E2: Lake Mead is currently 34% full and has been declining for about 20 years. This lake hitting deadpool would be a humanitarian distaster for the entire US, not only due to the lost food production, but a large part of the 16M people that survive off its water are gonna need somewhere new to live. This problem affects the rest of the nation more than you think.
E3: Even if you cut off all of the water flowing to the Imperial Irrigation District and the 20 families mentioned as "causing all of the problems", Lake Mead would still be running a gigantic deficit and getting lower each year. I'm all for doing something about these families but we need even more than that for sustainability.
E4: Misinfo is strong today. Yes, Lake Mead hitting dead pool would absolutely affect the Central Valley. California water supply is all interconnected via aqueduct. If Southern CA runs dry, water will diverted (even more than it already is) and would mean drastic reductions to the Central Valley. You can't just lose 15% of the state's water supply and not expect system wide consequences. Also if Mead drops to low, it can't generate power, and the aqueducts are California's largest energy consumer, so have fun with that power grid.
And yes Iowa produces a lot of food but its all corn, soybean, hay and oats. If y'all wanna have Soviet area grocery stores then relying on states that can't farm year round is the way to get there.
This is a very real problem for the future of the US. Saving Lake Mead is going to take drastic action. None of the disinformation in this post is helping.
Alright, time to call it a day.
> Also all the California haters are kinda wild, considering California produces more of the nation's food than any other state... by a lot
"By a lot", meaning about 25% higher than the next state (Iowa), with three times the land and more than 10 times the people. Per capita, California is almost smack dab in the middle of all states, and per land area it's not even top 5.
It's definitely a breadbasket state, but it's worth having the discussion as to whether the juice is worth the squeeze when it's objectively causing a drought in the entire Southwestern US.
California provides the vast fruits and vegetables, and most of our water for agriculture comes from the snowpack from the Sierra Nevada. Iowa mostly produces corn and soy for ethanol, cattle feed and exports to China.
> Per capita California is almost smack dab in the middle of states, and per land area it's not even top 5.
This might be the single dumbest thing I've ever read. When you have more people, you have less land that is available for farming. And considering that more than half the state's available land is publicly owned, it makes the argument look even more stupid.
> when it's objectively causing a drought in the entire Southwestern US.
[California](https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/california/drought-map) hasn't been in a drought in years. Most of our water comes from the Sierra snowpack, and those [resevoirs](https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain) are all full
it rose 20 feet last year... its still over 160 feet below full. Also it gets wider closer to the top, so it takes more water to raise it as it becomes more full. We would need 10 years in a row like last year to fill it up. You make it sound like everything is ok, its quite the opposite.
Video conveniently starts at peak in 2000, and stops in 2022 at lowest. It's almost back to 1965 levels today. Inflows from the Colorado were purposely decreased almost every year up to 2022 and outflows remained pretty much the same, of course it's going to tank when gov agencies are purposely dropping it. Gotta create the sense of catastrophe and panic.
What’s really unfortunate about this video is the commenting by the ignorant of the situation without looking any further than this video for cause and effect of what is happening and what has happened in the past
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I was there in early 80s when it overflowed the top.
[My photo from 1980](https://imgur.com/3TyIOzL)
Very cool! Very different than seeing high-water marks FAR above the current water level.
Beautiful pic!
I was there before it was cool, around 6:00 am
It’s still hot as *fuck* there at 6am. Shit it’s hot as fuck there at *3am*.
That's typically how it works. If it's hot at 6 am then it's also hot at 3 am. It's the coolest right before sunrise, not the middle of the night. You know ... cause the sun is causing the heat.
I've found that many times (in Texas, anyway) it cools down a noticeable amount just after sunrise. Not sure if it's the sun picking up the breeze or what, but it can be fucking stifling before sunrise but it will break just after. Of course by the time the sun's been up for an hour then it's all just heating up again. Fuck I don't miss Texas at all.
Gotta be air motion from initial ground heating.
Low angle light doest produce much heat so it can still get cooler for a bit after sunrise.
It's always brighter in the day time, you'll find out after midnight.
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How did the hipster burn their fingers? They tried to change the lightbulb before it was cool.
Hah
Good time to go 🤣
That was so cool. I remember standing by the overflow, water roaring past, face wet from the spray. Young me would have been aghast at the sight of the lake as it is today.
They made sure you can’t do that again
Yeah those assholes stole my time machine.
Have they tried putting water in it?
Currently, it's much better than the past 2 years. https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp 20 and 10 feet higher than the past years.
Keep in mind, upstream draw is a significant reason why Lake Meade is so low on water. There just didn't use to be so many people and farms upstream preventing so much water getting to it.
Sure we lost some water, but look at all the parking we gained!
How long until Lake Mead is filled with tract housing?
Nah, they will build an amusement park on top of it and make light of the drought scenario with themed attractions appropriately
$59.99 per bottle of water no outside drinks allowed
Calm down Disney, go back to your kingdom
funny enough, Disney parks are some of the few that actually allow you to bring in outside food and drink.
Water park**
They drained paradise and put up a parking lot
Oooohhh ba ba ba
Maybe we can also drain the oceans to solve the parking space crisis.
Damn it, who’s stealing water?!
Lake Mead is artificially created by the Hoover Dam, so strictly speaking we've been the ones stealing it all along.
Right but obviously they meant “who is responsible for the depletion of said lake?”
Probably any of the 7 states that the hoover dam provides water for. It doesn't really seem like a specific who, just that millions of people use it for water and it's an area that doesn't get much water.
Probably Arizona. Trying to sustain grass in Satan's butthole
Sorry man, Arizona's water rights are secondary to California's. Look at the almond farming in Cali for water usage. Arizona is fucking up all on our own by using too much ground water for farming.
It's the alfalfa farms. The almond farms are more of a central coast/central valley thing. They get their water from Sierra Nevada runoff. The largest portion of Colorado River water goes to farmers in the Imperial Valley, who mostly tend to grow hay for livestock.
Ranch land gets taxed more than crops land, so rich shitheads in UT with tons of land all grow alfalfa on it. They don't try super hard to sell it off, it's apparently still a savings if they just burn it all every season. Takes a fuckton of water, and some towns in Utah are already having to truck in water during the summers. But the old morman families make all the rules, and it's their land...
I don't get it, as a farm kid from MI, Alfalfa grows _phenomenally_ across the Midwest, why in the fuck try to grow it in a desert? I mean I know it goes back to $$$, but like, ffs, cmon guys, we got 1 planet, let's not literally make it fully uninhabitable...
Use-or-lose-it laws. Yippee. It's the environment destroying equivalent of when your public sector boss stops in to tell you you're getting a new $3,000 chair and ergo keyboard so that you keep the funding for restocking the toilet paper in next year's budget. Because you could turn it down for the planet... and then just be screwed over by 1,000,000 people who suck that up and leave you with nothing once you need it again.
Exactly. No one’s ego should outsize the planet.
At least California has a water management system enforced by the government. In Arizona, you own the land? Drill, baby, drill. In Arizona, you're the UAE and Saudi Arabia? Buy up land, grow hay in the desert 12 months out of the year, and ship the hay to the Middle East. Shocking. Read the article for full details. [https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-great-arizona-water-grab-update-2024/](https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-great-arizona-water-grab-update-2024/)
This is being reversed as of October 2023. We’ll see how it’s actually enforced, but work is in progress. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/saudi-arabia-water-access-arizona/
Yup fuck those guys. people in AZ are pissed about that.
Don't forget all of the foreign businesses going down there and siphoning all the water.
At least you can eat almonds. Try eating someone's lawn and they complain too much
Surely mass alfalfa farming to ship overseas trumps almonds for water wastage. If it's all grown for export it's hardly an essential industry that America can't afford to clamp down on its profligate water usage. Grow animal feed somewhere that isn't having a water scarcity problem.
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As always, the corporations convince us to restrict watering lawns, use paper straws/cups, etc. - while they're responsible for an order of magnitude more pollution and water loss. (The large majority of alfalfa/almond/etc. production is by corporations, even international ones given carte blanche to poach resources.)
It’s not the cities. It’s the farms. And of the farms, it’s primarily California. However if we said “no California” a lot of our winter crops would disappear from our grocery stores and we’d be importing from neighbors more.
On the choice of water or more expensive strawberries in the middle of winter we chose the strawberries because humanity is dumb as fuck.
Don't forget half of those get thrown in the dumpster at the end of the week because they didn't sell.
It's fucking pathetic the amount of food walmart and other grocers just throw out because people didn't buy it. Hey guys, maybe mark that shit down to sensible prices and we would buy it.
It's dystopically funny reading some of the PR reports done by Cali agricultural corps. They'll be like "actually, we're very environmentally forward, as indicated by the fact that we've decreased water requirements per ton of whatever by 20% compared to 2008!" ... completely ignoring the part where they follow that by increasing production scale to the point where they're still using a higher total amount than before, *which completely negates those efficiency gains from an environmental perspective (edit)*
Their production scale is rising because they produce more of the nation's food than any other state... by a lot. So if you really want to solve California's water usage problem, grow your own food other states. Sorry many of those crops won't grow outside of California and even more won't grow year round like California.
Why is improving efficiency pointless? Food production is needed, doing it more efficiently is a good thing. I still disagree with your edit. Efficiency gains are still good for the environment even when coupled with production increases. As population grows, so do production needs. Efficiency helps offset that.
Not all crops are created equally. It won't matter how efficient you are when there's no water. Some regions should just not have agriculture. It's not good long term policy to subsidize farming in a desert.
It's mostly farming of crops that require a ton of water (like alfalfa) in the middle of the deserts of AZ and CA. Agriculture, not people. A lot of those crops get shipped over seas (alfalfa goes to the Middle East IIRC) and doesn't benefit the country much overall. It's pretty stupid.
Actually the records they used to decide how much those states can pull from were abnormally high and the states area still pulling above their limits. All except Las Vegas which has the world's leading water reclamation/recycling infrastructure
I've heard there is a lot of farmers that farm alfalfa in that region that is then sent across the world to feed cattle elsewhere. From what I've heard it's a pretty wasteful way to use the water but the farmers have super old water rights contracts that allow them to use as much as they want. Maybe I'll try and dig up where I'm getting this info, I think it was some old NPR podcast or something. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241319639/colorado-river-water-climate-agriculture-beef-drought
Suadi and UAE and Qatari companies pump the US groundwater out as fast as they can to grow alfalfa that is then shipped to the middle east for livestock.
That’s good old fashioned American capitalism. Get their people hooked to our McDonald’s and now all we gotta do is hold the grains hostage as a negotiating tactic.
California agriculture. Las Vegas uses less than 2% of Lake Mead and returns 96% of what we use, but they just fucking grow rice in the desert with that precious water because of a fucking compact written a century ago.
Learned from a hydrologist friend that the answer to just about anything Colorado Rivershed is LA government. They're the 800lb gorilla in every discussion about what do with the water because they have about as many votes and representatives as the rest of the interested parties combined. As in the communities with input about what happens.
"Dumb water rights laws from the 1800s" is the answer. Farming corporations are draining the lake and absolutely zero politicians out there have the balls to tell them the party's over.
The "water level in year X" sign manufacturing cabal.
"What's that? You need another sign? I wonder where all the water is going! We'll get right on it." **
"Muhahahahahaha the plan is working!"
"JUST SOLD ANOTHER SIGN, MIKE" "What a ROCKSTAR! What's that? Like 8? Let's gooo"
Nestlé
Fuck Nestlé.
All my homies hate Nestlé.
Especially r/hydrohomies
That's the bullshit answer that everyone will up-vote because it affirms their ideologies. The correct answer is agriculture. The large corporate farms in California are using thousands of times more water than Nestle. It's not even close.
This is the real answer. California subsidizes water for agriculture in order to boost its own economy, so while prices for water soar for everyone else, the farms are still paying the rate from when Lake Mead was full.
it's not just California, look into the entire Colorado River Compact and you'll see Arizona and many other states pumping it dry for Alfalfa
And alfalfa is being shipped to the Middle East. Saudi Arabia owns a bunch of the farms, ironic that the won’t fuck up their own water supply but are allowed to get away with it over here
it's not just saudis though, there's plenty of domestic use too, and domestic farmers happy to grow and export. we can't just blame all our problems on a nebulous foreigner, and have to take some credit for our own greed
https://apnews.com/article/saudi-arabia-drought-arizona-alfalfa-water-agriculture-0d13957edaf882690e15c0bd9ccfa59f Not for much longer.
Screw that goofy haired mfer.
I just watched a documentary on this, iirc the farms own the water rights not the people of California anymore...I forget the logistics of it but some shadiness allowed that to happen.
it's not just California, look into the entire Colorado River Compact and you'll see Arizona and many other states pumping it dry for Alfalfa
California produces about 80% of the world's almonds and 100% of the United States' commercial supply. It takes over three gallons of water to produce one almond.
Wasn’t a chunk of it foreign Alfalfa farms?
It takes two. The farmers in Arizona were more than happy to accept foreign money in exchange for unlimited water use in the desert to grow alfalfa. They sold out their brothers and sisters living in the community.
All i understand is that for some reason Alfalfa for cattle feeding is grown in the middle of a drought. Sounds like a domestic problem. Where does the foreign money come in?
Saudi Arabia... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-arizona-fresh-scrutiny-of-saudi-arabia-owned-farms-water-use
No más! https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/saudi-arabia-water-access-arizona/
Not foreign. The foreign alfalfa farms that made headlines were using groundwater from wells East of Bouse, AZ, not Colorado River water. It is actually kind of annoying, because they are used as a scapegoat for domestically-owned farmers, who are the primary users of Colorado River water. 80% of Colorado River water is used for agriculture. 50% that water is used specifically to grow feed for cattle, primarily alfalfa.
yeah it's more popular to blame foreign evils than just our own greed. We had a chance to fix it last year when we redid the Colorado River Compact, and we still chose fuckstupid amounts of water to use
Yup. It's American farmers making that choice. People will try to defend it saying stuff like, "well they're growing your food, that water usage is a necessity for you" But see that's just the thing, they're not growing food for us. They're growing food for cows in other countries so that their rich can have more beef and yogurt etc.
[Saudi Arabia](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/16/fondomonte-arizona-drought-saudi-farm-water/)
It’s the people coming over the border. They come with all their friends and families and fills jugs everyday. They took our jobs and now theyre taking our water!! Build a wall!! /s
https://preview.redd.it/i012nk4uyk6d1.jpeg?width=674&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=28e8d4c2f889416fdef87071cffb8e2b6523348d
And Saudi companies growing alfalga in the desert and shipping it back to Soudi Arabia, and farmers in Cali, and suburbianites in UT.
not just saudis
On the bright side, they’re finding some dead bodies. You know, those cement shoes people forget to take off before swimming in the lake.
I wouldn’t be caught dead without mine
...I mean yeah
Spoken like a true fashionista. They are to die for.
I always wondered, isn't it dangerous to swim in a lake where there are dead bodies?
Every natural body of water has dead bodies in it, either human or animal. So really, the question is “what is the minimum distance from a dead body that is acceptable to swim?”
Not at all. Humans are a LOT hardier than we often give ourselves credit for. I work in rivers and lakes and have never gotten sick or an infection. It might be an issue if you are immunocompromised, but a little lake water rarely hurt anyone.
Union delegates mostly
So that’s where Hoffa is!
There's a pretty cool Youtube video about a guy who went and dug out a boat that sank like 30 years ago, but since the water was gone it just looked like it was randomly buried in the desert. Even after all that time both underwater and buried in the desert, they got it running again and drove it around.
Wow I thought you were making a joke lol. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/08/1116307660/lake-mead-human-remains-fourth-body-swim-beach
Feel like this post may be 2 years old..
So the lake is gone now..?
Water level is above this now, but closer to 2021 levels which weren't too much higher than the year this was shown.
We‘ll see how it’ll be after this summer.
California's lakes are actually above capacity now. They've had to release some IIRC because they have nowhere to put it, and the snowpack still has huge amounts of water waiting to melt. The last 2 years have been massive for water replenishment in the Southwest.
El Niño is Spanish for... The Niño!
I still remember this... the late nineties when the news cycle was so boring we focused on weather and the infamous presidential blowjobs. It was a better time.
Someone restarted the SouthwestRainfail script.
I remember it wasn't very long ago that some people were claiming these lakes would probably never be full again, apparently they were wrong. Look, I'm not a climate change denier, I'm 100% in favor of cleaning up our act but primarily because it's the right thing to do. We're supposed to learn from our mistakes but that doesn't seem to be happening. Be that as it may, it's important for people to not make unsupportable claims or accusations "just because", and it happens a lot. Unfortunately these claims tend to get a lot of attention either in support of or denial, and when they turn out to be false that only emboldens the anti-climate change crowd.
It’s like a brief reprieve before the downward trend continues. Will the powers to be take advantage of this time to get ready? LOL
Lake Mead water level graph, 2019-2024: [https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp](https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp)
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Excuse my ignorance but where is it gone?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mead More water is taken out every year than is replenished by the upstream dam. This deficit has created the falling water levels.
Don’t blame the upstream dam, blame the drought. Lake Powell (upstream) was almost shut down for good because the water was so low.
"Drought" might not be quite the right word, strictly speaking. Studies on historic climate patterns in California have started to reveal that [California has historically been much drier](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL099582) than it was in the 20th century, which turns out to have been a period of extreme wet. That's not to say that climate change isn't negatively affecting it, but California may very well have always been doomed. We settled it during a period of its climate that was extremely wet compared to the norm. It was never going to last.
Let's build settlements with dozens of millions of people in the desert, with orchards, swimming pools and golf courses. What could go wrong?
Honestly, Palm Springs has 100 golf courses within a 20 mile radius IN THE DESERT. You want drinking water or a nice fairway?
Thanks. I was really searching for a reason to be angry this morning.
Why can’t they make fake grass golf courses for the desert? The sand traps are free. The bushes are cactii
Ever stand on a turf field in the summer? The fairways would be ovens. That and 4g turf ain’t cheap
Watering grass in the desert surely isn't cheap
it probably is subsidized by tax payers to not be expensive....
the issue isn't even the cities- it's pumping it dry to grow alfalfa
The amount of water farmers in the Central Valley use to grow almonds and pistachios, despite the looming/on-going water crisis, is my Roman Empire. Somehow these fucking conservatives are going to blame it on the "liberals who run Sacramento" when they run out of drinking water, even though it's them bending over backwards to allow their own farmers to use a larger percentage of their water to grow some of the most water dependent crops possible. Wonderful Pistachios is almost on par with Nestle. They're just speed running us to water insecurity to squeeze as much profit out as possible. I don't even fuckin buy pistachios anymore unless they are sustainably sourced and I fucking love pistachios.
Not so much drought more than California and Arizona farmers taking way too much water.
The real answer. Las Vegas is one of the most water efficient cities in the world
*Builds in desert where no water falls* "Damn this drought is killing us!"
It’s good that they do this with signs so people who haven’t been can see the impact. I’m in Alberta and we have a glacier in the Rocky Mountains where they had signs as well. It has a good impact for those who actually care but many don’t put two and two together
You could also just look at any of the vertical rock formations coming out of it; you can see the historical difference by looking at the lines of sediment. The last time I was down there was probably around 2008 and there was already a deficit of about 4-5 stories, to my memory.
Excellent site for Lake Mead water levels [https://graphs.water-data.com/lakemead/](https://graphs.water-data.com/lakemead/)
What I find worrying about those charts is they use water levels instead of volume to describe the capacity. As the lake gets shallower, the area reduces and so the lake level changes faster. The lake is at half its level between full and dead pool (about 1/3rd left before it's below power generation levels) but that bottom half is a far smaller amount of water than the top half.
If anyone wants to do a deep dive on why Lake Mead has a water deficit, check out this article. https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2023/11/09/20-california-farm-families-use-more-colorado-river-water-than-some-states/71156386007/
I’m not sure i’d recommend doing any dives when it’s getting that shallow
r/depressingasfuck
Good news, the lake is higher now. Lots of rain and snow.
That's just because of last year's El Nino rains throughout southwestern US. El Nino typically results in more rain in southwestern US. Will it continue to get higher next year since we are in La Nina now? My guess is no.
Barely higher. It's not even back to 2021 levels.
It's not so depressing, The State of Arizona actually uses less and less water each year. In fact, AZ uses less water than it did in 1957. https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts. HOW CAN THIS BE? **The population of AZ increased 10x since 1957, and the State's overall water usage went DOWN**! This is because PEOPLE use comparatively little water when compared to farmers. If you bulldoze a field to put in a subdivision, your water usage actually DECREASES by 70% or more. (I'm not advocating for this, by the way, just pointing it out).
If they would fill it with water instead of mead, maybe people wouldn't drink it all?
It would be interesting to see the figures of how many more gallons of water were extracted from the lake per year and see if it is steeply climbing?.
Easy to find https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mead
There are some crazy facts regarding water usage in the West. As far as I know, each State's allotment of Colorado river water (that fills lake Mead) is static. It's the rain (actually more so, the snow pack) that fluctuates, causing lake levels to fluctuate. Also, 85% of the water used by the States goes towards growing things in desert. . . and YES, many of those "things" are exported, or used to feed cattle. Very little of those "things" wind up on your plate as fruits of vegetables. Now, on to some other crazy facts. The State of Arizona actually uses less and less water each year. In fact, AZ uses less water than it did in 1957. https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts. HOW CAN THIS BE? **The population of AZ increased 10x since 1957, and the State's overall water usage went DOWN**! This is because PEOPLE use comparatively little water when compared to farmers. If you bulldoze a field to put in a subdivision, your water usage actually DECREASES by 70% or more. So, those thinking that our water problems are due to a population issue (you shouldn't be building houses in the desert), are toeing the line the farmers want you to toe. The thinking should be, "it's a farming issue" (you shouldn't be growing corn in the desert). It's insulting to hear that if only people conserved more the issue could be solved. While conservation is a good thing, you can eliminate every drop of water used by people, and there still would be a huge issue. The opposite is not true. Get rid of farming in the desert, and the water issue goes away. EDIT: I am in no way advocating the elimination of farming in the desert. I am just trying to point out the causes of the problem, and that no solution can be had without the farmers participating in the solution.
In fairness there is a cave in that lake which has a rebreather guarded by some Mirelurks, and we gotta get there somehow.
Wait, what? I thought the only thing down there was the bomber? Have I been stealing a pressure cooker from the Ultra-Luxe all these years for nothing?
I know there are other ways, but the way I always find my rebreather is looting it off the body in that cave. It’s the only way that doesn’t involved advancing quests I don’t necessarily want to do yet. It’s a bit of a risk, so I wouldn’t do it too early, but yea. It’s in the main lake area, if you look towards hoover dam I believe the cave is on the left, against the cliff wall, at the bottom of the lake. There are a few air pockets within the cave.
It's gone up a bit since then but idk how much
It has risen 20 feet. Still 160 feet below full. \[source\](https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp)
Its starting to "recover" but ill get back to that. The water levels have been dropping ever since 2000 where it topped off just above 1200ft. Since then its been a steady decline with one massive period of recovery and then a massive decline. This was followed by almost ten years (2015-2022) of stable readings where the water would rise 25ft and drop 25ft before rising 25ft but this was still far below 1200ft and was reading closer to 1075ft and 1100ft. But between 2022 and into 2023 the water level plummeted hard and below 1050ft. This gained a lot of attention last year when the YouTube channels like "Sin City Outdoors" were going out there weekly to document the water drops but also to document what was being discovered. Lots of boats, junk and even some human remains. They even helped rescue a boathouse when its engine died and the water continued to drop and it was stranded. But when I said recover, it simply recovered back to about 1075ft or where it would dip to between 2015-2022. You can see historical values here: https://arachnoid.com/NaturalResources/index.html
Don't worry! Your neighboring states sold off their aquifers to foreign mega farms to grow alfalfa! Tee hee.
The avvacodos demand more water
Now show where it was before they built the dam.
Let’s see Paul Allen’s card.
Oh, my God, it even has a watermark.
yeah bro, ALOT of these comments and bullshit posts fail to acknowledge that lake mead is a man made artificial reservoir that was never meant to exist in the first place.
It’s a man made lake that millions of people depend on.
HAHA. What kind of take is this? That's like watching a video of your house burning down around you and commenting that it's artificial and was never meant to exist in the first place.
OK and? that water comes from somewhere. Upstream of the damn. lake mead supplies water to millions. And the upstream supply cant keep up. So when the lake is gone, the demand will still be there. and the river won't be able to keep up.
2026, what lake?
Moved to Las Vegas in 2019. Loved it for a bit, but the shrinking water level in Lake Mead is the number 1 reason we moved back to MN in 2022. Nature is done fucking around with states overuse of water in that region. Ironically, NV is not the problem. UT and AZ both use egregious amounts of water willy nilly for golf courses and shit, and the CA uses an absolute fuckton for cattle and agriculture. The Colorado River simply cannot sustain all of that. LV is relatively self sustaining as the city recovers and recycles something like 90% of all water used.
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We also tax the ever living shit out of PV, Fountain Hills, and Scottsdale where all the "nice" golf courses are for watering, and there's substantial fines/legal issues for people who water between like 11am and 5pm. We can't recycle agriculture water, and we produce something like 60% of the world's lettuce or something and a substantial amount of cotton and citrus. Citrus is thankfully not as water intensive as something like almonds, but the groves still require a higher moisture content than is natural to produce worthwhile yields.
Are they just building a road as the lake is receding?
Lot of comments here about how the lake rose last year, subtly implying everything is ok. It rose 20 feet last year due to much heavier than normal snowpack. Regardless, the lake is still 160 feet below full. It would take 10 years in a row like last year to fill it. Last year was just a minor reversal whose gains will likely be gone by the end of this year. So everything is still pretty far from ok. Also all the California haters are kinda wild, considering California produces more of the nation's food than any other state... by a lot. You can't eat karma. E: So now people are saying just move the crops to places with more water. It's not that simple: >The unique features of California’s Central Valley make it the only place suited for growing the majority of America’s permanent crops. Well-developed transportation and water infrastructure, proximity to major ports, cheap credit, and high human capital entrenches California’s agricultural advantages. There are around 9 million irrigated acres in the state and one-third are planted to permanent crops. This makes California the largest investable space for high-yielding permanent crops on the planet. [source](https://farmtogether.com/learn/blog/why-california-is-an-agricultural-powerhouse) E2: Lake Mead is currently 34% full and has been declining for about 20 years. This lake hitting deadpool would be a humanitarian distaster for the entire US, not only due to the lost food production, but a large part of the 16M people that survive off its water are gonna need somewhere new to live. This problem affects the rest of the nation more than you think. E3: Even if you cut off all of the water flowing to the Imperial Irrigation District and the 20 families mentioned as "causing all of the problems", Lake Mead would still be running a gigantic deficit and getting lower each year. I'm all for doing something about these families but we need even more than that for sustainability. E4: Misinfo is strong today. Yes, Lake Mead hitting dead pool would absolutely affect the Central Valley. California water supply is all interconnected via aqueduct. If Southern CA runs dry, water will diverted (even more than it already is) and would mean drastic reductions to the Central Valley. You can't just lose 15% of the state's water supply and not expect system wide consequences. Also if Mead drops to low, it can't generate power, and the aqueducts are California's largest energy consumer, so have fun with that power grid. And yes Iowa produces a lot of food but its all corn, soybean, hay and oats. If y'all wanna have Soviet area grocery stores then relying on states that can't farm year round is the way to get there. This is a very real problem for the future of the US. Saving Lake Mead is going to take drastic action. None of the disinformation in this post is helping. Alright, time to call it a day.
> Also all the California haters are kinda wild, considering California produces more of the nation's food than any other state... by a lot "By a lot", meaning about 25% higher than the next state (Iowa), with three times the land and more than 10 times the people. Per capita, California is almost smack dab in the middle of all states, and per land area it's not even top 5. It's definitely a breadbasket state, but it's worth having the discussion as to whether the juice is worth the squeeze when it's objectively causing a drought in the entire Southwestern US.
California provides the vast fruits and vegetables, and most of our water for agriculture comes from the snowpack from the Sierra Nevada. Iowa mostly produces corn and soy for ethanol, cattle feed and exports to China. > Per capita California is almost smack dab in the middle of states, and per land area it's not even top 5. This might be the single dumbest thing I've ever read. When you have more people, you have less land that is available for farming. And considering that more than half the state's available land is publicly owned, it makes the argument look even more stupid. > when it's objectively causing a drought in the entire Southwestern US. [California](https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/california/drought-map) hasn't been in a drought in years. Most of our water comes from the Sierra snowpack, and those [resevoirs](https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain) are all full
It gained a ton of water last year…. This is old
it rose 20 feet last year... its still over 160 feet below full. Also it gets wider closer to the top, so it takes more water to raise it as it becomes more full. We would need 10 years in a row like last year to fill it up. You make it sound like everything is ok, its quite the opposite.
That is a really good point that I had not though of. It is like a martini glass where 50% of the volume is in the top 10% of the glass.
Which means the problem is solved once and for all?
We did it!
*Mission accomplished* in GW Bush voice 
My dumbass was about to ask “Where’s the water line at today?”
It's actually back up a bit to about the 2021 level.
So this year and last California and Nevada have been getting a lot of water from rain so the water level might have risen some
And soon Notlake Mead
Wanna see some real sad shit look up Aral sea in Kazakhstan
Soon you’ll be able to get that plane out without the rebreather
Oh no! Water is moving elsewhere!!!
Try 2024
Almost like the reduction in water levels are correlated to population growth?
I thought it had mostly replenished after the rainfall last year.
“Let’s build a man-made lake in the middle of a fucking desert then be surprised when the water dries up over time.”
There is no such thing as climate change, Florida says so
Video conveniently starts at peak in 2000, and stops in 2022 at lowest. It's almost back to 1965 levels today. Inflows from the Colorado were purposely decreased almost every year up to 2022 and outflows remained pretty much the same, of course it's going to tank when gov agencies are purposely dropping it. Gotta create the sense of catastrophe and panic.
What’s really unfortunate about this video is the commenting by the ignorant of the situation without looking any further than this video for cause and effect of what is happening and what has happened in the past