Re: How’s the weather

576
A Severe Drought Is Threatening the Hoover Dam Reservoir—and Water Throughout the West

Had the formidable white arc of the Hoover dam never held back the Colorado River, the US west would probably have no Los Angeles or Las Vegas as we know them today. No sprawling food bowl of wheat, alfalfa, and corn. No dreams of relocating to live in a tamed desert. The river, and dam, made the west; now the climate crisis threatens to break it.

The situation here is emblematic of a planet slowly, inexorably overheating. And the catastrophic consequences of the extreme weather this brings.

Hoover Dam is the height of a 60-story building and is 45 feet thick at the top and 660 feet at the bottom. Its construction, in the teeth of the Great Depression, was a source of such national pride that thousands of people journeyed through the hostile desert to witness the arrival of what has become an enduring monument to collective effort for the public good.

The engineering might of Hoover dam undoubtedly reshaped America’s story, harnessing a raucous river to help carve huge cities and vast fields of crops into unforgiving terrain. But the wellspring of Lake Mead, created by the dam’s blocking of the Colorado River and with the capacity to hold enough water to cover the entire state of Connecticut 10 feet deep, has now plummeted to a historic low. The states of the west, primarily Arizona and Nevada, now face hefty cuts in their water supplies amid a two-decade drought fiercer than anything seen in a millennium.

“We bent nature to suit our own needs,” said Brad Udall, a climate and water expert at Colorado State University. “And now nature is going to bend us.”

Surveying the dam’s sloping face from its curved parapet, Michael Bernardo, river operations manager at the US Bureau of Reclamation, admits the scarcity of water is out of bounds with historical norms. While there is no “average” year on the Colorado River, Bernardo and his colleagues were always able to estimate its flow within a certain range.

But since 2000, scientists say the river’s flow has dwindled by 20 percent compared to the previous century’s average. This year is the second driest on record, with the flow into Lake Mead just a quarter of what would be considered normal.

“These are scenarios that aren’t necessarily where we expect to be in our models,” said Bernardo, whose work helps deliver a reliable level of water to thirsty western states. Nearly 40 million people, including dozens of tribes, depend on the river’s water. “We’re getting those years that are at the extreme ends of the bell curve. We’ve seen extremes we haven’t seen before, we now have scenarios that are very, very dry.”

In June, the level of Lake Mead plunged below 1,075 feet, a point that will trigger, for the first time, federally mandated cuts in water allocations next year. The Bureau of Reclamation (the government agency originally tasked with “reclaiming” this arid place for a new utopia of farmland and a booming western population), expects this historic low to spiral further, dropping to about 1,048 feet by the end of 2022, a shallowness unprecedented since Lake Mead started filling up in the 1930s following Hoover dam’s completion. This will provoke a second, harsher, round of cuts.

“We’ve known this point will arrive because we’ve continued to use more water than the river provides for years,” said Kathryn Sorensen, a water policy expert at Arizona State University. “Things look pretty grim. Humans have always been good at moving water around but right now everyone will need to do what it takes to prevent the system from crashing.”

Seven states—California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Nevada—and Mexico are bound by agreements that parcel out the river’s water but those considered “junior” partners in this arrangement will be hit first.

Should second-tier cuts occur, Arizona will lose nearly a fifth of the water it gets from the Colorado River. Nevada’s first-round cut of 21,000 acre-feet (an acre-foot is an acre of water, one foot deep) is smaller, but its share is already diminutive due to an archaic allotment drawn up a century ago when the state was sparsely populated.

The latest era of cooperation between states that rely upon the Colorado River has now entered the “realm of lose-lose”, according to Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager of resources for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “Everyone’s going to have to do more with less, and that’s really going to be challenging for people,” she said. “‘Drought’ suggests to a lot of people something temporary we have to respond to, but this could permanently be the type of flows we see.”

The decline of Lake Mead is apparent even at a cursory glance. The US’s largest reservoir is now barely a third full, the dark basalt rock of its canyon walls blanched by a distinctive white calcium ring where the water level once was. This level has plunged by about 130 feet in the past 20 years and is currently receding by about a foot a week as farms hit their peak irrigation period.

The pace of change has been jarring to the millions of people who regularly boat, fish, and swim on the lake, with the National Park Service recently laying down new steel platforms to extend launch ramps that no longer reach the water. Some marinas have been wrenched from their moorings and moved because they have been left marooned in baking sediment.

Seen from above in time-lapse over the years, Lake Mead looks like a spindly puddle withering away in the Mojave Desert, as nearby Las Vegas, which gets almost all of its water from the lake and went a record 240 days last year without rain, balloons in size. The West’s ambitions have crunched into the searing reality of the Anthropocene.

The Colorado River rises in the lofty Rocky Mountains, before tumbling through 1,450 miles of mountains, canyons and deserts until it reaches the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. Seasonally melting snow has traditionally replenished the river but snowpack on mountaintops in the west has declined by an average of 19 percent since the 1950s, while soaring temperatures have dried out soils and caused more water to evaporate.

This morphing climate, plus the rampant extraction of water for everything from golf courses in Phoenix to vegetables growing in California to gardens in Denver, means the Colorado fizzles out in dry riverbed before it even reaches its Mexican delta.

Only 1.8 percent of the west is not in some level of drought, with California, Arizona and New Mexico all experiencing their lowest rainfalls on record over the previous 12 months. Lakes in Arizona are now so low they can’t be used to fight the fires themselves spurred by drought, while the retreat of Lake Folsom in California uncovered the wreckage of a plane that crashed 56 years ago. The governor of Utah has resorted to asking people to pray for rain.

The heat has been otherworldly, with Phoenix recently enduring a record six straight days above 115 Fahrenheit (46.1 Celsius). A “heat dome” that settled over the usually mild Pacific north-west pushed temperatures to reach a record 108 Fahrenheit (42.2 Celsius) in Seattle and caused power lines to melt and roads to buckle in Portland. A few hundred miles north, a fast-moving wildfire incinerated the town of Lytton in British Columbia the day after it set a Canadian temperature record of 121 Fahrenheit (49.4 Celsius). Barely into summer, hundreds of people have already died from the heat along the west coast.

The west has gone through periods like this “megadrought”, with only occasional respite, for the past two decades. But scientists have made clear the current conditions would be virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, pointing to a longer-term “aridification” of the region. All of the water conservation efforts that have kept shortages at bay until now risk being surpassed by the rising heat.

“The amount of water now available across the US West is well below that of any time in modern civilization,” said Park Williams, a hydroclimatologist at Columbia University. Research by Williams and colleagues last year analyzed tree rings to discover the current dry period is rivaled only by a spell in the late 1500s in a history of drought that reaches back to around 800, with the climate crisis doubling the severity of the modern-day drought.

“As the globe warms up, the west will dry out,” said Williams. “The past two years have been shocking to me, I never thought I would see downtown LA reach 111 Fahrenheit as it’s so close to the ocean, but we have some of the driest conditions in 1,200 years so the dice are loaded for more heatwaves and fires. This could be the tip of the iceberg, we may well see much longer, tougher droughts.”

In the guts of the Hoover dam, down bronze-clad elevators and through terrazzo corridors, a line of enormous turbines help funnel water out downstream, creating hydropower electricity for more than 1 million households in the process. Five of the 17 turbines, each weighing the same as seven blue whales, have been replaced in recent years with new fittings more suited to operating in lower lake levels.

Even with these adaptions, however, the decline of Lake Mead has caused the amount of hydropower generated by the dam to drop by around 25 percent. The drought is expected to cause the hydro facility at Lake Oroville, California, to completely shut down, prompting a warning from the United States Energy Association that a “megadrought-induced electricity shortage could be catastrophic, affecting everything from food production to industrial manufacturing”. The association added that such a scenario could even force people to move east, in what is called a “reverse Dust Bowl exodus”.

Bernardo said a similar shutdown of the Hoover dam would require more than 100 feet in further water level retreat, which is not anticipated, although he finds himself constantly hoping for the rains that would ease the tightening shortages.

“We all want the nice weather but we need those good storms to build everything back up,” he said.

“We’d need three or four above-average years, back to back, to restore the lake. Your guess is as good as mine whether we’ll get that. I’ll continue to watch the weather, every day.”
https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... -the-west/

This is like a row of dominoes starting to fall. Those in the LGC that live in the areas affected understand this well. This post was for those of US that aren't face that challenge and is food for thought as the climate change continues.

Today at 8 am it is 79 degrees cloudy skies with a chance of rain. We have had one day this July where the temp reach our normal average high of 96 degrees. All other days have been below normal with increased rain chances. High forecast today is 93 degrees and that is the highest temp forecast for the week.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: How’s the weather

577
A major engineering feat, I'm awed every time I drive across Hoover Dam. Las Vegas had less than 10,000 people in 1936 when Hoover Dam was completed, the metro population is now 2 million. The 1.8 percent of Colorado River water that goes to NV is mostly used by Las Vegas, but Las Vegas has water rights far to north of the city.

The majority of Colorado River water goes to CA, my water is from the river. The great Colorado River Aqueduct was built in 1933 to provide Colorado River water to LA, it was another William Mulholland project and the Metropolitan Water District. It begins at Parker Dam opened in 1938, it's the deepest dam in the world.


High here today is supposed to be 92F, but it's overcast and humid but no rain in the forecast.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: How’s the weather

578
LA is a desert community as are most in So Cal. You fly over LA and all you see is grassy yards and lush tropical vegetation.. Total bullshit.

Damn them Dams. Free the water.

A raging monsoon came in last night after 10 pm and we got a solid 1 1/2 inches. Total so far for my home is 4 inches. Some parts of So AZ are getting 3 - 4 inches at once.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

Re: How’s the weather

579
My mother's father worked on the Hoover Dam, then called Boulder Dam. They were Okies headed to California to pick fruit when the truck with their life in it broke down just outside of Overton, Nevada. "We're here," Grandad said. He started working on the dam the next day. My mom was about five.

With respect to the actual weather here, it's 103. About normal for here and now. Yes, very droughty, with orange skies from many fires. Lucky for us the wind takes most of it over to New York, apparently.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/we ... y-n1274478

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: How’s the weather

580
Fighting nature and limited resources. While the Boulder Dam was an engineering marvel, it also created ecological problems. I suspect nature will win this fight and the west coast will go through rapid depopulation the same way it went through rapid growth.
Image
Image

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: How’s the weather

581
Early developers of the Southwest were looking for steady sources of water to keep the development dream alive, but also for agriculture and flood control. Dam it up and build a hydroelectric power plant, we jokingly said they had a "beaver complex". It kept the Army Corps of Engineers busy. A whole series of dams and reservoirs from the Dakotas in the north to Texas in the south and west to the Pacific.
https://tataandhoward.com/10-largest-re ... ed-states/

Yes everything south of the Tehachapi Mountains in So Cal is desert and west into AZ, NM, TX... People in LA planted their lawns and flower gardens and made it just like the East Coast, people in Palm Springs and the low desert did the same but their water is from aquifers.

Your family story CDF sounds a bit like the Joads in "The Grapes of Wrath". Many families from the Oklahoma Dustbowl moved west.

I don't want to jinx it but highs here have been in the 90s, bearable with a/c. Another big storm passed over again yesterday heading east which kept it humid all day.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: How’s the weather

582
highdesert wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 8:29 am Early developers of the Southwest were looking for steady sources of water to keep the development dream alive, but also for agriculture and flood control. Dam it up and build a hydroelectric power plant, we jokingly said they had a "beaver complex". It kept the Army Corps of Engineers busy. A whole series of dams and reservoirs from the Dakotas in the north to Texas in the south and west to the Pacific.
https://tataandhoward.com/10-largest-re ... ed-states/

Yes everything south of the Tehachapi Mountains in So Cal is desert and west into AZ, NM, TX... People in LA planted their lawns and flower gardens and made it just like the East Coast, people in Palm Springs and the low desert did the same but their water is from aquifers.

Your family story CDF sounds a bit like the Joads in "The Grapes of Wrath". Many families from the Oklahoma Dustbowl moved west.

I don't want to jinx it but highs here have been in the 90s, bearable with a/c. Another big storm passed over again yesterday heading east which kept it humid all day.
When I flew from Houston to California. From west Texas to the California coast, everything was brown.
Image
Image

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: How’s the weather

583
sikacz wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 9:17 am
highdesert wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 8:29 am Early developers of the Southwest were looking for steady sources of water to keep the development dream alive, but also for agriculture and flood control. Dam it up and build a hydroelectric power plant, we jokingly said they had a "beaver complex". It kept the Army Corps of Engineers busy. A whole series of dams and reservoirs from the Dakotas in the north to Texas in the south and west to the Pacific.
https://tataandhoward.com/10-largest-re ... ed-states/

Yes everything south of the Tehachapi Mountains in So Cal is desert and west into AZ, NM, TX... People in LA planted their lawns and flower gardens and made it just like the East Coast, people in Palm Springs and the low desert did the same but their water is from aquifers.

Your family story CDF sounds a bit like the Joads in "The Grapes of Wrath". Many families from the Oklahoma Dustbowl moved west.

I don't want to jinx it but highs here have been in the 90s, bearable with a/c. Another big storm passed over again yesterday heading east which kept it humid all day.
When I flew from Houston to California. From west Texas to the California coast, everything was brown.

The California hypers call it "golden" as in California the Golden State. You're right though, it's brown showing it's desert roots.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: How’s the weather

585
featureless wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 10:46 am It's always brown in California in the summer. Mediterranean climate, so it only really rains in the winter.
You're right, the rainiest month down here has been February but Dec-Jan-Feb is when we get our rains.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: How’s the weather

594
Society is right on track for a global collapse, new study of infamous 1970s report finds

Human society is on track for a collapse in the next two decades if there isn't a serious shift in global priorities, according to a new reassessment of a 1970s report, Vice reported

In that report — published in the bestselling book "The Limits to Growth" (1972) — a team of MIT scientists argued that industrial civilization was bound to collapse if corporations and governments continued to pursue continuous economic growth, no matter the costs. The researchers forecasted 12 possible scenarios for the future, most of which predicted a point where natural resources would become so scarce that further economic growth would become impossible, and personal welfare would plummet.

The report's most infamous scenario — the Business as Usual (BAU) scenario — predicted that the world's economic growth would peak around the 2040s, then take a sharp downturn, along with the global population, food availability and natural resources. This imminent "collapse" wouldn't be the end of the human race, but rather a societal turning point that would see standards of living drop around the world for decades, the team wrote.

Climate Change Is Triggering Eco-Anxiety

When news about the environment becomes grim, you might be overcome by an urge to hide or collapse.

So, what's the outlook for society now, nearly half a century after the MIT researchers shared their prognostications? Gaya Herrington, a sustainability and dynamic system analysis researcher at the consulting firm KPMG, decided to find out. In the November 2020 issue of the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology, Herrington expanded on research she began as a graduate student at Harvard University earlier that year, analyzing the "Limits to Growth" predictions alongside the most current real-world data.

Herrington found that the current state of the world — measured through 10 different variables, including population, fertility rates, pollution levels, food production and industrial output — aligned extremely closely with two of the scenarios proposed in 1972, namely the BAU scenario and one called Comprehensive Technology (CT), in which technological advancements help reduce pollution and increase food supplies, even as natural resources run out.

While the CT scenario results in less of a shock to the global population and personal welfare, the lack of natural resources still leads to a point where economic growth sharply declines — in other words, a sudden collapse of industrial society.

"[The BAU] and CT scenarios show a halt in growth within a decade or so from now," Herrington wrote in her study. "Both scenarios thus indicate that continuing business as usual, that is, pursuing continuous growth, is not possible."

The good news is that it's not too late to avoid both of these scenarios and put society on track for an alternative — the Stabilized World (SW) scenario. This path begins as the BAU and CT routes do, with population, pollution and economic growth rising in tandem while natural resources decline. The difference comes when humans decide to deliberately limit economic growth on their own, before a lack of resources forces them to.

"The SW scenario assumes that in addition to the technological solutions, global societal priorities change," Herrington wrote. "A change in values and policies translates into, amongst other things, low desired family size, perfect birth control availability, and a deliberate choice to limit industrial output and prioritize health and education services."

On a graph of the SW scenario, industrial growth and global population begin to level out shortly after this shift in values occurs. Food availability continues to rise to meet the needs of the global population; pollution declines and all but disappears; and the depletion of natural resources begins to level out, too. Societal collapse is avoided entirely.

This scenario may sound like a fantasy — especially as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels soar to record highs. But the study suggests a deliberate change in course is still possible.

Herrington told Vice.com the rapid development and deployment of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic is a testament to human ingenuity in the face of global crises. It's entirely possible, Herrington said, for humans to respond similarly to the ongoing climate crisis — if we make a deliberate, society-wide choice to do so.

"It's not yet too late for humankind to purposefully change course to significantly alter the trajectory of [the] future," Herrington concluded in her study. "Effectively, humanity can either choose its own limit or at some point reach an imposed limit, at which time a decline in human welfare will have become unavoidable."
https://www.livescience.com/collapse-h ... rowth.html

The question is, Will we face the climate change crises, like we have faced the pandemic, with half way measures to control the spread of COVID19. We had so many deniers of climate change along with those that know and still won’t change because of profit. The climate change is worse than a pandemic but yet we are basically doing nothing much on a global scale to make it better. Very similar to the pandemic. We won’t release the Patents so any drug company can make the vaccine, because of the drug companies political pull and money. Both Salk and Sabin refused to patent the polio vaccines. They gave the knowledge how to make the vaccines as a gift to humanity. Can you picture the drug companies doing that today or the oil and gas companies shifting to renewable energy sources?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: How’s the weather

595
Fascinating question, TT. As we see the hapless party of audible acne do the public 180 on getting vaccinated, it will be hard for them to avoid comeuppance in 22 for this bullshit they've done. How many fall to idiocy will depend upon whether locals in those races can exploit R foolishness.

By not giving out the vaccine recipe for free, Big Pharma gives fiction writers those great scenes where one hundred poor people compete to the death for a one million dollar prize on pay per view.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: How’s the weather

596
Notice how it went from the Sabin vaccine and the Salk vaccine to the Moderna vaccine, Pfizer vaccine, etc.

In the 1950's we honored scientists. Now we honor corporations.

Anyway, back to the weather. High 90s here in the Midwest. And sunny. Perfect afternoon to spend at the public range with the Blackhawk 357 (except for the sunburn and dehydration).

Results of range time? Inconsistent targets. A couple targets with crappy spreads, but enough with good groups to keep me happy. Turns out focusing on the front post is real. I can tell when I fall back on focusing on the bullseye--because accuracy goes to shit. A good day.

Pretty much couldn't survive in the South anymore. Don't know how I survived 20 years in North Carolina--I damn near died in the Midwestern sun today. But I couldn't bring myself to stop.

Re: How’s the weather

597
cooper wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 12:28 am In the 1950's we honored scientists. Now we honor corporations.
Yes Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin are the standouts of the 1950s. Research is very expensive and corporations walk in with research money and manufacturing and distribution resources. Fauci has said that if there was as much misinformation about polio vaccines in the 1950s as there is about the COVID ones, we'd still be fighting polio. Polio was physically debilitating and there was the optics of rows and rows of patients in iron lungs which must have scared parents.

My father didn't believe in doctors but my mother did and we got the vaccinations available at that time.


Still overcast today, another storm heading east. Today will be cool, only 86F after a low last night of 68F.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: How’s the weather

599
CDFingers wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:06 am Orange sun through the smoke.
Fire season in the valley.
Dry wells. Cold beer. Ash.

CDFingers

I feel for you and your wife, I've been there. A/c cools the air but it doesn't filter out the smoke. A steady intake of adult beverages has a numbing effect which helps. The Dixie Fire is now the largest in CA.
https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2021/ ... t-overview
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Ahrefs [Bot], Bing [Bot], Semrush [Bot] and 3 guests