# @downinnadesert on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DbOhE1mm6bc
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/68285914-downinnadesert-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/6399ded857.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-07-25T19:00:02.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Down In The Desert🌵 (@downinnadesert) — https://gondola.cc/downinnadesert

## Caption

There is less water in Lake Mead and Lake Powell right now than at any point since 1957, back when Glen Canyon Dam was still being built and Lake Powell did not exist yet.

The two lakes are basically one giant reservoir split by the Grand Canyon, and they hold just under 60 percent of everything stored in the Colorado River basin. Mead is 27 percent full and sitting less than a foot above the lowest it has ever been. Powell is 23 percent full and could break its own record next month. Researchers expect a new combined low every single day until snowmelt comes next spring.

The river runs 1,400 miles, supplies 40 million people, irrigates more than 5 million acres of farmland and powers around 700,000 homes. About 95 percent of the basin is in drought after one of the driest, warmest winters the West has recorded.

Sarah Porter runs the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU, and her read on it is blunt. She says the levels are a signal the system is at risk of crashing, meaning the reservoirs get so low that water cannot be delivered out of them at all.

There is also a federal report saying Powell could drop below minimum power pool by spring 2027, which is the point where Glen Canyon Dam stops generating electricity.

The seven states were supposed to reach a deal on sharing less water by February. That deadline passed with nothing. Reclamation is putting out new operating guidelines in the coming weeks either way.

El Niño might bring more rain and snow this winter, but Porter says even a record snowpack would not pull the system out of the danger zone. One of the researchers behind the analysis put it another way. “Hope and prayer is no way to run a national water system.”

What should Arizona actually be doing here?

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#coloradoriver #lakemead #arizonawater #ASU #downinnadesert

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## Tags

lakemead, coloradoriver, downinnadesert, asu, arizonawater

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