Environmental Glance
Lake Powell, the US’s second-largest reservoir, threatens to plunge to unprecedentedly low levels this year after a historically bleak snowpack failed to raise its water level, scientists and water experts have said, adding renewed urgency to stalled talks over how to conserve a water source depended on by tens of millions of people in the US south-west.
The 185-mile Colorado River reservoir currently stands at about 22% of its capacity, or roughly 5.6m acre-feet. Lake Powell fell below that level for a few months three years ago. But those 2023 levels were recorded in the winter, when the reservoir, which straddles the Utah-Arizona border, hits its lowest ebb. Spring runoff carried the level back up to 9.6m acre-feet by June, according to data from the US Bureau of Reclamation.
Not this year. After a winter of historically low snowpack in the mountains and a heatwave that broke records across the south-west in March, water levels at Lake Powell barely rose this spring at all. Even after supplemental releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream, it ended the month of June below the annual low it hit the month before, and could keep dropping. Except for those few months in 2023, Lake Powell’s water level has not been this low since June of 1965 – two years after US authorities first started filling it.
Super Typhoon Bavi is bringing intense winds to the remote U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, as forecasters warn of the potential for severe damage.
A “prolonged, dangerous heatwave” was sweeping across parts of the central and eastern United States on Thursday, with forecasters warning that extreme record-breaking temperatures are expected to continue into the holiday weekend for millions of Americans.
Floodwaters tore through Kentucky neighborhoods, damaging homes and streets as photos capture the aftermath.
Hundreds of firefighters in Utah have struggled to suppress a wildfire that scorched an additional 20,000 acres (8,000 hectares) as of Saturday, as low humidity and strong winds accelerated the fire spread, according to state officials.
Salt Lake City’s National Weather Service declared a “particularly dangerous situation red flag warning”, the first in the service’s history, according to a social media post.
