A tropical storm and a rainy August have little impact on historically low Lake Powell
Parts of the West saw a year’s worth of rain in a single day from Hurricane Hilary, with swaths of normally arid desert in Death Valley turning into lakes after a historic 2.2 inches of rain on Aug. 20. For reference, Death Valley usually gets 2.24 inches of rain annually.
But the rain is expected to have little effect on Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir in the country along the Utah-Arizona border on the Colorado River. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shows the elevation of the reservoir actually declined, slightly.
“Though Yampa has some increased flows that are expected to reach Lake Powell next week, Powell isn’t expected to see significant impacts from hurricane Hilary,” the Bureau wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday.
According to the Lake Powell Water Database, levels have been declining since early July. The reservoir sat at about 3,520 feet in mid-April. Snowmelt from the historic winter started filling the Colorado River, and by the first week of July Lake Powell hit 3,584 feet. But levels have been dropping since, and on Aug. 22 the bureau reported it was at 3,575 feet.
The winter was a “welcome relief,” reclamation commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said in an Aug. 15 news release, but both lakes Powell and Mead “remain at historically low levels.”
On Wednesday, the bureau said Lake Mead is expected to be about a foot higher by the end of August than what was previously projected, “due to the decreased irrigation water demands caused by excessive rain in southern Arizona and California.”
It’s been an unusually wet August for Utah, especially Salt Lake City — as of Tuesday afternoon, the airport had recorded 2.57 inches of rain. The average for that same timeframe is .37 inches. Data from the weather service suggests this is the sixth rainiest August ever for Salt Lake City.
The remnants of Tropical Storm Harold, which made landfall in Texas near Corpus Christi, Texas, on Tuesday, are currently pushing through northern Mexico, and could move north and bring rain and thunderstorms to Colorado and possibly Utah.
