{"id":59296,"date":"2021-09-12T17:25:51","date_gmt":"2021-09-12T22:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59296"},"modified":"2021-09-12T17:25:51","modified_gmt":"2021-09-12T22:25:51","slug":"lake-mead-the-largest-reservoir-in-the-united-states-drops-to-a-record-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59296","title":{"rendered":"Lake Mead \u2013 The Largest Reservoir in the United States \u2013 Drops to a Record Low"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lake Mead \u2013 The Largest Reservoir in the United States \u2013 Drops to a Record Low<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
\n
\"Lake<\/a><\/p>\n

August 7, 2000<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Lake<\/a><\/p>\n

August 9, 2021<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The reservoir stands at its lowest level since the 1930s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States and part of a system that supplies water to at least 40 million people across seven states and northern Mexico. It stands today at its lowest level since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. This means less water will be portioned out to some states in the 2022 water year.<\/p>\n

As of August 22, 2021,\u00a0Lake Mead was filled<\/a>\u00a0to just 35 percent of its capacity. The low water level comes at a time when 95 percent of the land in nine Western states is affected by\u00a0some level of drought<\/a>\u00a0(64 percent is extreme or worse). It continues a 22-year\u00a0megadrought<\/a>\u00a0that may be the region\u2019s worst dry spell in twelve centuries.<\/p>\n

These natural-color images were acquired in August 2000 and August 2021 by\u00a0Landsat 7<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Landsat 8<\/a>. The tan fringes along the shoreline in 2021 are areas of the lakebed that would be underwater when the reservoir is filled closer to capacity. The phenomenon is often referred to as a \u201cbathtub ring<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lake elevation data below come from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages Lake Mead,\u00a0Lake Powell<\/a>, and other portions of the Colorado River watershed. At the end of July 2021, the water elevation at the Hoover Dam was 1067.65 feet (325 meters) above sea level, the\u00a0lowest since April 1937<\/a>, when the lake was still being filled. The elevation at the end of July 2000\u2014around the time of the Landsat 7 images above and below\u2014was 1199.97 feet (341 meters).<\/p>\n

\"Lake<\/a><\/p>\n

2000 \u2013 2021<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

At maximum capacity, Lake Mead reaches an elevation 1,220 feet (372 meters) near the dam and would hold 9.3 trillion gallons (36 trillion liters) of water. The lake\u00a0last approached full capacity<\/a>\u00a0in the summers of 1983 and 1999. It has been dropping ever since.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lake Mead \u2013 The Largest Reservoir in the United States \u2013 Drops to a Record Low August 7, 2000 August 9, 2021 The reservoir stands at its lowest level since the 1930s. Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States and part of a system that supplies water to at least 40 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[140,220,4152,31758,827,866,2060],"class_list":["post-59296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate","tag-drought","tag-lake-mead","tag-sci-tech-daily","tag-united-states","tag-water","tag-water-shortage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59297,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59296\/revisions\/59297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}