…like the Titanic, but dryer.
Quick links I go to (explanations below)
- Lower Colorado Water Supply Report (Monday update)
- Lake Powell Water Data and Levels (daily update)
- Lake Mead Water Data and Levels (daily update)
- Salt and Verde River Data (daily update)
- Arizona’s Declining Groundwater (suspiciously incomplete)
Intro
This is for my homies who are about to get ruined (financially at best) with regards to any real estate and businesses they own in Arizona. Which for the United States is ground zero for climate change. Rapidly increasing population isn’t doing the region any favors, but at least, temporarily, is providing buyers for what I think are soon to become stranded assets. Thus enabling one to sell rather than abandon their assets and become a refuge, in what is sure to become a exodus as people apparently have to experience in real time, what the above links show obviously is coming, soon.
That people are still moving to Arizona en masse definitely speaks to a low IQ, and lack of foresight for the not too distant future. For those of thus who grew up there, or moved there decades ago, it’s hard to blame them, as nobody talked about climate change back then, and the number of people relying on the now diminishing water levels was dramatically less.
I’m not going to present any screenshots as the bulk of the linked data is rapidly (meaning in days and weeks, NOT years) changing and becoming out of date. And I’m hoping by looking at the links regularly my friends and family will internalize the rate of change, that isn’t being made obvious if you only look once, or look at one of the links.
So what I’m hoping to do is explain a little below what the above websites show and what to look for in each to envision the short and longer range trends. Hopefully allowing you to make your own decisions about when you might want to be someplace else.
Almost certainly you’re going to want to get out, before everyone else knows what’s up.
Any anyway, feel free to ask me about my aspirational ecoVillage. I got the land (157 acres) already.
This page is for me too, as the links up top will keep me from having to remember all the websites I frequently visit. So I can quickly satisfy what seems a morbid curiosity, like watching a slow moving train wreck.
Preliminary facts
- In the links, all reservoir levels are presented as surface levels “above sea level” so when it says, for example, Lake Powell water level is 3546 feet. That’s not how deep the water is, that’s how high the water is above sea level. Lake Powell hits minimum power pool (the depth at which the electric generators stop working) at 3490 feet. Lake Powell hits dead pool (the lowest spillway, at which point the lake is functionally empty) at 3370 feet.
- Lake Mead’s minimum power pool is 950 feet, and dead pool is 895 feet.
- Both of these reservoirs are filled canyons, which means they are V-shaped. Such that there was way more water in every foot of depth at the top of the V when the reservoir was full than now that they are near their bottoms. Each remaining foot of depth contains less water than the last, and for equal amounts of water delivered downstream, the lakes empty ever faster. I think this should be alarming.
Full Lower Colorado Water Supply (updated Mondays)
The Lower Colorado Water Supply Report (U.S. Department of Interior) gives the best overall snapshot of the lower Colorado River. It gives a full picture report of Arizona’s primary reservoirs, most notably Lakes Mead and Powell. At the time of my updating this (8-27-25) Lake Mead is at 31% capacity, which for pessimists means the glass is 69% empty. I judge this as bad, and I encourage you to click on the link, to see if and how much it has changed since I wrote this.
Usually, I look at Total System Capacity, as well as Lake Powell and Lake Mead Capacity.
Lakes Havasu and Mohave are relatively small and for as long as I have been watching (since 2020), have been topped off at more than 90%, serving as holding tanks for delivery of water to California. I would say to be worried if they drop below 90%, but I would already be worried if I still lived there.
Lake Powell Specific
Lake Powell Water Database (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) and Levels (daily updates). Both of these sites are updated daily, and are pivotal for understanding the effects of global warming and local aridification.
The database link has a graph of later levels over the prior year, but it’s the tables given below it that are especially revealing. Which include inflows (what’s truly coming down the Colorado River) vs what’s being let out. Scrolling down this data is given in comparison to various averages, such as since the year 2000, since Powell was filled in 1980, and since the dam was completed in 1966. Crucially, current inflows are way less than average even since the year 2000, when the year when the “mega drought” is said to have started. So current conditions are way worse than drought, and you can see that the drought conditions are way worse than normal. It’s worth considering that this drought seems to be the result of human caused global warming and thus only expected to get worse, and not “return to normal.” Normal seems going going gone.
The levels link has much of the same data, but is presented in a more visual format, showing where the lake levels are today in comparison to the last two years. And if you hit the check boxes beneath, you can add three additional years. In doing so you can see that aside from the good water year of 2023, since then things nearing the record lows of 2022, and are in fact declining at an even faster rate. Below the graph it says “change since yesterday” usually with a down arrow in decimals of a foot. Every 0.08 feet is an inch, and I’ve seen the lakes drop as much as 4 inches in a day.
Lake Mead Specific (daily updates)
Lake Mead Water Data (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) and Levels. For now I would consider these sites less important, particularly the water data, as about 85% of the water making it into Lake Mead is what’s released from Lake Powell and therefore what’s incoming is not as true a measure of what Mother Nature is sending down the pipe per recent rain and snowfall.
To look at Lake Mead alone could give a false impression of assurance, however bleak, as Mead “percent full” is quite low (31% last time I checked). With Powell nearing dead pool, Mead won’t be propped up for long.
Barring a good winter, I would expect both lakes to drop off in tandem given Powell’s levels have little more to give up, and both lakes residual water heights are at the bottom of the V, so to speak.
The Levels links for both Powell and Mead, when scrolled down, show updated visuals of the U.S Drought Monitor, which for as long as I have watched have not looked good for the entire Southwestern United States.
Salt/Verde River Specific (daily updates)
Salt and Verde River Data (Salt River Project)
Until recently the Salt and Verde River flow rates and reservoir levels have held up, per my recollected observations, so I hadn’t given them a very close look. However, this might be changing as of the past year. The above link (last time I checked) shows the total system contents to be at 53%, down from 77% just one year ago.
I’m unsure if this is because of lesser precipitation, or if already instated mandated cuts of Arizona water usage of the Colorado River, has only caused increased utilization and drainage of the Salt and Verde River associated reservoirs. However, increased use, or lesser supply (or both, which is what I expect) leads to much the same result.
Arizona Groundwater (suspiciously incomplete)
This is a 2025 NASA groundwater report. Which from what I can tell is the first one since 2014, for which they make their comparison.
I’ve not watched groundwater as closely, and I can’t tell that anyone is. Groundwater is obviously less visible. When it comes to aquifers it’s been my observation that wells around the world just go dry, often without warning. While out of sight is apparently out of mind, and this might lessen emotional stress, I don’t think it’s not a good life strategy, and I have to think that optimists did poorly on the Titanic.
Just recently I saw this news episode. At the timestamp of 1:24 they cite the above linked NASA study, addressing groundwater. The NASA link is more to a summary, with a cool visual. This is the actual 2025 study, which I found very interesting. But the news talks about the 2014 study that it’s being compared to saying “it’s not bad.” However, here’s the 2014 study, and if you read it, you can clearly read they were well concerned back then. Things are just a lot worse in 2025.
The main problem I have with both studies, is that the data only shows how much water was lost, and makes the point clear that groundwater loss is more than surface water loss, in all the above mentioned rivers and lakes. What neither study shows (someone correct me if I’m wrong) is how much ground water is left, which I can’t help but think is really important! And I can only think of two reasons why they might not say. The first is not at all comforting, which would be that they don’t actually know. And the second is that they know, but don’t want to say, which to me, would be downright disquieting if I still lived there. I would expect that as river and lake water supplies cut themselves off, there would be a compensatory further over-reliance on groundwater, only making the latter run out all the faster, regardless of how much is left.
Conclusion
I think people should look at the charts, regularly, maybe do a little math, and draw their own conclusions. While the math is to some degree uncertain, and certainly the weather is, I would ask myself things like:
- If next year looks like this year, what will next year’s Mead and Powell water levels look like?
- If people and businesses are still moving to Arizona, doesn’t that make things worse?
- How long can this impending water shortage be kept “secret?”
- Or since all the websites I cited are in the public domain, and aren’t exactly secret, how long can this reality stay out of the collective consciousness?
- What will peoples realization of that do to Arizona home and business values?
- If global warming is getting worse, and not better, what does that mean for the immediate future?
- If Climate Change (aka Global Warming) is making almost everywhere worse, where might it be making things, at least in some ways, better?
Anyway, about that ecoVillage I’m always talking about…
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