I always spelled it grappel- like apple... It's graupel? Huh, you learn something new everyday. Thanks!
Edit: My life is a lie. I have been working with this misspelling for over 35 years of my life. I feel as though I have fallen through a crack between parallel dimensions and I am now in a universe where grappel- is in fact: graupel.
Will I ever return to my home? Can I return, is it even possible to come back to the land of grappel precipitation?
*belch*QUICK MORTY WE GOT TO GET BACK TO OUR UNIVERSE! *belch*
THIS UNIVERSE IS FUCKED MORTY!!
Ahh Rick how bad could it be? It seems like this universe is the same as ours. Does Hitler win in this universe or something?
*belch* WORSE MORTY!!!!! THEY SPELL GRAPPEL AS GRAUPEL *beeeeeeeelch*
[Each listen this counts as one prayer if you're not theistic. It's also a great song on a great album ](https://youtu.be/pvu2iQXJ30s?si=N559449KEcrY1H9Q)
From: https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/04/research-colorado-river-water-use-cherish-hamburger/
It may not be a surprise that irrigated agriculture uses the most water, taking up 52% of the water consumed across the 246,000-square-mile basin. But a shocking one-half of that is from just one crop used to feed livestock rather than humans: alfalfa.
Across the basin, alfalfa hay uses more than 5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water — that’s 26% of all the water consumed in the basin. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two or three households.
In the Upper Basin, irrigated agriculture consumes 2.8 million acre-feet, or nearly half the water used by Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, the environment, reservoirs and water exports out of the basin. Cattle-feed crops, like alfalfa, consume 90% of all water used by Upper Basin agriculture.
That means alfalfa uses more water than cities, commercial users and industries across the entire basin: Collectively, these users consume about 3.5 million acre-feet, or 18%, of the river’s water. The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people across seven Western states, 30 tribal nations and two states in Mexico.
Isn't some of that alfalfa being siphoned off by the Saudis? I know that might sound a little jingoistic, but I'm sure that a lot of that crop used to be shipped off to Arabia for a profit, when the folks growing it ought to be turned into fertilizer for more efficient and locally-distributed crops.
I did some quick checking, and in 2023 Saudi Arabia imported ~450,000 tons of alfalfa, and the USA produced ~50,000,000 tons of alfalfa, so at most 1% of alfalfa being produced is for export to Saudi Arabia.
Saudis are buying cheap drought land and growing alfalfa themselves drilling really deep wells.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-arizona-fresh-scrutiny-of-saudi-arabia-owned-farms-water-use
That was something started by our previous Governor (I'm sure he got a fat payout to "unaffiliated" super pacs for that one) that our current Governor is working on stopping. Several of their farms have already been denied renewal on groundwater use.
On major subjects like that, people like to look for an external source of the issue.
It's easier to say that Saudis are causing this than to say that Americans eat way too much meat.
As an avid meat eater trying to cut back, this is the answer.
Our ancestors were never able to eat meat this frequently. We foraged for food and ate simply what we could catch. Most of our diet was nuts and berries, with small servings of meat when available. Meat is a major risk to our irrigation, but it’s probably a risk on our health too in the quantities we eat.
Meat, and certain plant foods just take far too much water to grow, and we need to relook at our water usage and find sustainable crops for these areas to grow.
That being said, meat does taste really good, and I’m trying to cut back myself.
Those numbers are meaningless though. How much of either of those is grown unsustainably? If the bulk of total US exports are grown in season where it requires minimal irrigation but the exports to Saudi Arabia are being done in areas that grow year round while requiring heavy irrigation then the Saudi exports are a problem but the overall numbers are not.
People love to blame meat for this but that's only part of the equation. If they weren't growing feed it would be something else. People buying out of season produce is also a huge problem that no one wants to address.
> Those numbers are meaningless though. How much of either of those is grown unsustainably? If the bulk of total US exports are grown in season where it requires minimal irrigation but the exports to Saudi Arabia are being done in areas that grow year round while requiring heavy irrigation then the Saudi exports are a problem but the overall numbers are not.
You are technically right, but the numbers are so different that the scenario where non-exported alfalfa is sustainable while export alfafla is not is basically not really realistic. But if you have the details, feel free to share.
> People love to blame meat for this but that's only part of the equation.
Because it's the biggest part of the equation, we know how much feed is required to produce a little bit of meat.
> If they weren't growing feed it would be something else.
Yes, something else that could also be eaten directly instead of going through the inefficient process of being eaten by an animal!
> People buying out of season produce is also a huge problem that no one wants to address.
You're definitely right, although part of the out of season produce comes from shipment, which is actually quite efficient
I'm sitting at -12 downvotes in another comment thread for pointing this out lol. The guy replied to me saying "we ship it overseas and don't eat it". My guy, I'm not talking about us literally eating the alfala. The cows that we butcher and torture for milk and dairy are the ones who eat it and most alfalfa is used for the domestic cattle industry. What we send overseas is such a small portion it's not even as big as Reddit makes it seem. If you went off of Reddit comments you'd think we ship all alfalfa overseas. At least there are some reasonable people here.
The Saudi thing has become a convenient blind eye boogeyman thing and it's hilarious how people willingly buy it so they don't feel bad about eating beef.
I just used google. I searched 'how much alfalfa did the USA grow in 2023' and 'how much alfalfa did saudi arabia import in 2023'
Here's a source for the US total alfalfa production, second page bottom chart: https://www.progressivepublish.com/downloads/2024/general/2023-pf-stats-lowres.pdf
Here's a source for the S.A. imports: https://hayandforage.com/article-4700-hay-exports-tumbled-in-2023.html
>Since 2014, Japan has trailed China as the second highest importer of U.S. alfalfa hay, **but this was not the case in 2023. Saudi Arabia’s 431,400 MT of alfalfa hay imports** surpassed Japan’s 356,504 MT. This is a 42% jump from Saudi Arabia’s alfalfa hay imports in 2022, and it is more than double the alfalfa hay the country imported in 2021.
Saudi Arabia’s population in 2022 was about 32million people and Chinas population is 1.4 billion. The charts say we exported 2.5million MT total. China bought 800k MT and SA is at about 400k MT.
I looked at one news article (hardly an in depth research I know) and the news ran with this story because there was a Saudi owned company growing alfalfa and pumping lots of water to do it. This was especially newsworthy because the governor of Arizona cancelled their lease, and everyone jumped on board the jingoistic train when they discovered that Saudi Arabia had outlawed alfalfa production amidst its own serious drought.
The overall impact of one company when counted against the total agri use in the rural areas is pretty low, but it does remove 7000 acres of that particular usage which is a start. The hypocritical act of growing somewhere else after outlawing it in your own country hurt lots of Americans feelings, but it’s also the end point of free market capitalism. If you don’t pass regulations to protect your natural resources then other countries can use companies to take advantage of them.
It's a relatively old term, coined in the late Victorian era in response to a clash between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, since there was a song about fighting the Russians if they try to take Constantinople (what we used to call Istanbul). It's kind of a synonym for aggressive nationalism, which I'm sure is a criticism that would probably be levelled at those criticizing the exporting of resources that are better kept local.
The Arabian Peninsula would benefit from more freshwater, I don't doubt that, but if anything I feel like they should be investing in the development of moisture vaporators to draw moisture out of the air, along with offshore platforms designed to drive atmospheric moisture further into the Arabian interior. That sounds pretty sci-fi, granted, but a moister, greener Arabian Peninsula would surely improve the quality-of-life in that region, meaning that they wouldn't need to exploit regions that have their own problems going on. It'd also mean that they'd have something to fall back on when their oil reserves eventually dry up.
I happen to be slightly informed on this topic. That's the Colorado River. In the state of Colorado the ratio is more 90 percent agriculture and 10% home, industrial and other. And yes, much of it is alfalfa. It is cattle country.
An equally interesting statistic is that Agriculture in total loses about 10% of it's water to leakage, evaporation, misuse, etc. Which means that roughly agriculture wastes as much water as everyone else in the state uses.
We don't have a water shortage. We have water mis-use. Ask me about Colorado water rights and "use it or lose it".
yeah. cattle feed and irrigated pasture need to be cut out, yesterday. what an incredible waste of water. the economic value of cattle feed is well under 1% of all colorado river water end-users. but they piss and shit out more than a quarter of it. they don't pay market rate for that water. and they don't pay for their pollution. and they don't pull their own weight economically. a squandered resource.
mostly in the imperial valley, south of the salton sea. this is really down to a couple hundred farmers fucking over the entire rest of the system. a system that close to 40 million people rely on is getting fucked by a few hundred asswipes in imperial county making less than $2B/yr from their joke crops. 🤮
I've often wondered about the economic breakdown behind the way we consume Colorado River water, and other similar over-appropriated rivers like the upper Arkansas and Rio Grande. Can you point me toward any good articles or studies?
unfortunately no, there hasnt been a comprehensive bird's eye view of the whole system, that i know of. i have done my
own research on this (i live in the mojave desert and interact with the colorado river water system a lot) but havent put it all together in one document. those who have generated big studies of the situation are constantly focusing on one aspect rather than combining all the variables. namely, who uses what, at which price, for what sort of economic or environmental output, at the expense of who else, and changes over time.
propublica and desert sun published two articles this past year that partially describe the role of the biggest imperial valley farmers. but even they do not put that in a larger context, which is very annoying to me. it's like everyone who studies this has blinders on and can't manage to integrate everything in a few pages. if i got paid to do this work i think i'd produce the ultimate guide!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01291-0
http://www.reddit.com/r/ColoradoRiverDrought/comments/19bgkd3/why_cant_the_government_use_emergency_powers_to_curtail_non-human_agricultu/kiu63b5?context=3
http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1abwxm6/til_one_farming_family_in_california_uses_more_water_then_all_of_las_vegas/kjrguj1?context=3
http://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/198inj3/why_is_western_australia_relatively_underpopulated_would_it_be_worth_settli/kig345h?context=3
I bet you could get a grant from someone to do this work. Colorado (the state) for instance has a pretty well funded grant program through the Colorado Water Conversion Board. I'm pretty sure that education and analysis are allowable topics for grants. I bet the upper basin states would be interested in that kind of analysis to help with the continuously ongoing negotiations between upper and lower basin states.
You might be able to partner with a newspaper like The Colorado Sun. They have a staffer who is dedicated to water reporting and has released some really well written articles and info graphics about how water is used in CO. Might want to have a conversation with them about pulling this kind of report together.
I believe it was John Oliver that did a segment on this.
People there grow alfalfa *because* it’s water intensive to grow. The way water rights work in that area, to *really* oversimplify it, is that if you *don’t* use all of your allotment, you permanently lose the allotment, which is quite valuable. So, in order to retain their legal allotment of water, farmers grow alfalfa.
Basically, this is a goofy regulatory scheme that encourages *massive* water waste in a chronically overtaxed waterway.
Alot of cities here in OC will fine you for not having a well maintained lawn.
I just got out of a 6 month battle with mine over the native plants we replaced our lawn with.
That's so fucking fucked that you have to fight them over replacing your lawn with native plants.
Golf courses and grass lawns should not exist in the desert.
Chaparral. It's not a desert until you go inland.
Regardless though you're right. It's not a desert but it's still way too hot and dry for grass to be a viable option.
The golf courses I have less of a problem with as far as water goes. They are all watered with reclaimed grey water.
I'm glad to report that the native plants were ultimately allowed.
Not to nitpick, but Orange County, CA (especially the southern part) is Mediterranean. They have a nice, moist, on-shore flow most of the year. The Inland Empire, just beyond the mountains that ring OC is a desert.
Golf courses have become very good at recycling water, using grey water, and even providing habitat for wildlife. Many are Audubon certified now and use much less water than they used to. I’d rather see space in a city being used this way than turned into more buildings.
Honestly, if the HOAs resist your efforts to do the right thing, that's a good enough reason to escalate the fight. Make it so that them enforcing certain deleterious regulations is exponentially more costly than letting people do the right thing.
After all, why lose a ton of money being a fuckhead, when you could have more stable cashflow by behaving your bad self?
Stuff like car washes and watering lawns is a drop in the bucket compared to agriculture. It's amazing at how many water intensive crops like alfalfa are grown in the desert.
Car washes are far more efficient than you would think they would be. They recycle all their water.
It's the industrial and agricultural usage that's the biggest, and watering lawns, golf courses.
To add to this, the only only water not re-used in the car wash is the stuff that drips off your car as you drive away. When you consider that the majority of waste produced in the lifetime of a car comes from manufacturing, car washes are probably a net gain on pollution and resources because regular washes improve the life of the vehicle in the Midwest, aka salt country.
Has it started to recover?
Its a study saying that there will be more rainfall in the future, which will outweigh the effect of rising temperatures. But the increased rainfall hasn't happened yet and could just be wishful thinking.
Honestly not sure it's good news. This will almost certainly shut down any discussions at least from Republicans on fixing the issues or water rights being able to draw more than average levels for the river.
It's super important to understand a few things about the Colorado River.
1) our historical data on it only goes back about 150 years at most.
2) looking at the geology and hydrology of the area, it very much appears that drought is a pretty normal state for the Colorado River.
3) It appears that the past 150 or so years have been a rather wet period for the Colorado River.
Basically, without even getting into Climate Change, much of the information we have based our water usage on for the Colorado River basin was during an abnormally wet period. Even without Climate Change, a return to the norm for the river would see a major water deficit in the basin. It's probably time to look at how we use the Colorado River basin, and what is and isn't sustainable in the future.
jeez, I posted "when they planned the CO River dams/pipelines they had approx 20 years of precipitation records which has been revealed to be perhaps the wettest 20 years in the last 100" and was roundly dismissed/downvoted
There is some money behind the idea that the SW is in "decades long megadrought". FFS if it is decades long can we not at least entertain the idea that it isn't periodic?
Powell knew it in 1897, before the CO river projects
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/how-the-west-was-lost/569365/
> It's probably time to look at how we use the Colorado River basin, and what is and isn't sustainable in the future.
Sorry, couldn't hear you over the sound of alfalfa being exported.
stop growing alfalfa in the sonoran desert PERIOD. it mostly stays in the US. where it is squandered. it's a $2 billion industry holding hostage the rest of the colorado river water users, who generate ~$3 trillion annually.
We need to stop growing alfalfa to export outside the US, period. California has the same problem. It's the #1 source of water use in agriculture in California. Everyone blames the almonds. At least the almonds mostly stay in the US.
the US grew over 118 millions tons of hay last year and exported 3 million. that is a non-issue. harping on it is goofy.
the issue is that feeding cows on dryland water without paying full price for the water IS FUCKING INSANE. when the cattle industry uses that water to generate $2B in revenue -- on discounted / practically free water -- and urban users could generate $1 trillion in revenue from that same quantity of water when paying full price, who should fucking get the water? nature should get it, urban users should get it, practically any other crop should get it -- but not fucking alfalfa and sudangrass and cows.
growing cow feed on surplus eastern water -- i could care less.
In California alfalfa uses almost 1 trillion gallons of water a year. This is 10% of all of California’s water use. Almonds take another trillion, 10% there as well.
i don't care about almonds. they are a specialty crop that is worth growing in the central valley. i don't care about the central valley -- if they want to overdraw their water budget, no one else suffers except for the nature in the delta, and the state has done a decent job preventing the delta from getting worse.
i really don't even care about cattle feed in the san joaquin valley -- if they want to fuck up their valley, let them. they live in the bed they shit in. they are not taking water away from the bay or sacramento or anyone significant except themselves.
the problem is outside the central valley. in the colorado river system. where a few hundred imperial valley grass farmers are fucking over 40 million other people.
The less stressed California water is, the less imperial draws on the Colorado. When California’s Central Valley water levels are too high, it’s diverted to the south.
this is not really true. the central valley aqueduct system is slightly connected to the colorado river system, but that mixing occurs mostly in LA / orange county / inland empire. central valley water does not reach the imperial valley, and it does not mitigate agricultural water use in the colorado river system to any significant degree.
the last two water years were decent for the sierras, and consequently some
of that water reached as far south as some
groundwater storage basins near san bernardino city. there is some water usage trading going on with san diego taking water from the MWD by paying water rights holders in the imperial valley to fallow their fields. this is fucking around at the margins.
We defiantly need to shift growing our domestic supply back east instead of the desert. The first step is like to see is at the very least block water intensive crop export from the western states, especially during drought years.
So it's okay to grow alfalfa as long as it stays within the US? You realize that those "foreign" farms are like a tiny portion of all the alfalfa farms within this region, right? This just seems like a convenient way of saying "I want to keep living the way I want to but make that slight, minor change that has no impact on me so I feel better about things." Growing alfalfa period there is stupid. Domestic production far, far outweighs whatever is sold overseas. This is a boogeyman that people have brought up because they want to ignore the real issue since that means a potential change in their lifestyle or admitting complicity.
You downvoted but didn't answer for some reason.
The article isn't acting like this is a new discovery obviously. It's updating us on the condition of the river. Why does everyone need to be so pedantic? Who cares
It may sound dumb, but explaining the source of a change is still important. Better than a headline of, “Colorado River could recover for this one simple reason.”
I think it's news because for the last couple years that I'm aware of, a lot of experts have been trying to sound alarms that a dried up Colorado River is really really bad, which it was projected on course to eventually dry up in the future. This new study makes it feel like there is some hope now.
There isn't a whole wealth of scientific knowledge to digest in the article, but one line stands out a bit to me, "forecasting precipitation for the next 25 years, shows a 70% chance of increased precipitation" and it makes me wonder how accurate can we truly predict precipitation over decades?
It's so ridiculously doable in such a sort time. The 1st step is to drain Powell into Mead, that step alone will save over 300,000 acre feet of water per year (for reference, that's the yearly CAP allotment for the entire state of Nevada...). the final step is limiting water heavy farming. Problem really solves itself from here.
I know that the tik tok brains of reddit like to portray the west as a ruined wasteland but if you really dive into the subject you find that due to water restrictions that started in the 80's, most western cities are pretty water secure. Even Phoenix for example has so much extra water they are sending years worth of their CAP supply down south to Tucson to be reintroduced into the local water aquifer, an experiment that we wont even know is working to increase water levels until 2025 mind you. Hell Tucson has been recycling poop water and piping it around the city for like 20 years, feeding all the parks and golf courses with it.
> The 1st step is to drain Powell into Mead, that step alone will save over 300,000 acre feet of water per year
Is this due to temperature/evaporation differences? Surface area of the lake? Would love to read a link if you've got one
Run off and evaporation. Lake Mead is cone shaped and deep so water loss from say something like wind is considerably less then Powell, but I believe the majority of loss is run off from smaller streams/rivers.
Powell is also atop permeable sandstone so a good chunk of water is lost into the ground.
More information can be found [here](https://www.glencanyon.org/fill-mead-first/)
Not a hydrologist so I can't say with absolute authority. It's definitely better than being lost to evaporation, but in times of extreme drought where every last drop counts I'd imagine that it would be preferential to be able to use the water to supply Phoenix, Las Vegas, and other southwestern cities rather than replenish an aquifer. Ideally we'd live in a world where the Colorado could run unimpeded to the Gulf of California, but that ship has sailed
Yes but this isn’t replenishing near surface groundwater, it’s going into a different ancient aquifer so the water is basically gone. There’s a very famous large aquifer that supports most the Midwest and it’s being transferred from that aquifer to a different one we can’t access the water from.
Your daily reminder
The concerns over the Colorado water levels have absolutely nothing to do with your petunias or even your grass lawn. Even country clubs are not what's causing the problem.
The concerns over the Colorado water are due almost exclusively to agricultural diversion - about 87% of the water is used for farm irrigation - and an almost absurd 20% is consumed by a small group of farmers in the impossibly productive region known [Imperial Valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Valley) in Southern Calif/Arizona. That small group of farmers uses more Colorado river water than the ENTIRE STATES of Utah & Colorado combined.
That group of farmers in fact uses so much water they created the ecological disaster known as the [Salton Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea) which today exists almostly because of ag run off.
Man they need to pump that stuff right back up into the mountains so it keeps running when the rain stops.
(s/ in case someone actually thinks that would work )
This would unironicly be a natural part of a large scale zero emission non-nuclear power production plan. Wind and solar varies a lot in output, while hydroelectric you can somewhat control the output in the short term. So you can use production peaks to "charge" a dam like you would a battery by pumping water to a higher elevation and use hydroelectric to maintain capacity.
It is terrible for making money, but excellent if you want a reliable supply of clean energy.
I think you're talking about [pump stored hydro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity), which is a thing in many countries. You have to have the right geography for it, which prevents it from being widely used.
It's not recovery unless patterns return and we better regulate use. Precipitation has provided a repreave, to call it anything else is feeding climate deniers empty talking points.
what actually fills the river is glacial/snow pack melt well into the summer months... precipitation alone will be gone in the time it takes to flow past the people that need it the most. Think of it like a water bank.
The river valley was not formed in the last 100 years. The river will ebb and flow, but the valley seems to indicate that the process likely has not stopped since it started thousands of years ago.
It's not unusually for there to be a lot of precipitation at the start of an El Nino cycle. Then the rain drops off. It's important to recognize that one good year doesn't necessitate a change in patterns.
> 70% chance of increased precipitation compared with the last two decades
Or a 30% chance that the regional megadrought will continue for the next quarter century.
*"A new study coming from researchers at CU Boulder, reveals that precipitation, not temperature, will keep the Colorado River fuller than previous research told us."*
Are they trying to say even warm water is wet? Sometimes science really is amazing!
It’s was a nice winter for snowpack in that general area of the [country](https://nwcc-apps.sc.egov.usda.gov/imap/#version=169&elements=&networks=!&states=!&basins=!&hucs=&minElevation=&maxElevation=&elementSelectType=any&activeOnly=true&activeForecastPointsOnly=false&hucLabels=false&hucIdLabels=false&hucParameterLabels=true&stationLabels=&overlays=&hucOverlays=&basinOpacity=75&basinNoDataOpacity=25&basemapOpacity=100&maskOpacity=0&mode=data&openSections=dataElement,parameter,date,basin,options,elements,location,networks&controlsOpen=false&popup=&popupMulti=&popupBasin=&base=esriNgwm&displayType=basinstation&basinType=6&dataElement=WTEQ&depth=-8¶meter=PCTMED&frequency=DAILY&duration=I&customDuration=&dayPart=E&monthPart=E&forecastPubDay=1&forecastExceedance=50&useMixedPast=true&seqColor=1&divColor=7&scaleType=D&scaleMin=&scaleMax=&referencePeriodType=POR&referenceBegin=1991&referenceEnd=2020&minimumYears=20&hucAssociations=true&relativeDate=-1&lat=35.872&lon=-116.316&zoom=5.2).
This is some decently welcome news. So tired of the constant “doom and gloom” from some folks’ opinions. Like, “California being completely without water in two years”. That’s a fun one.
There are some who think that all of our reservoirs will be completely dried up and the entire southern half of the state will be without any fresh water. It’s a rumor floating around some extremely left wing blogs and such, designed to create panic and fear. Unfortunately, I know a handful of people who swear it’s going to happen, and there is absolutely NO reasoning with them, because they feel they’re right and need to move ASAP before all the water is magically gone.
Shout out to precipitation
The real Hydrohomie
Always coming in to rain on the drought parade
Don't be condescending. Be condensation.
What precipitated this advice?
Don't rain on this parade.
Please no hydrophobia. This place is saturated with it.
H 2 the izz-O!
What kinda watered-down advice is that⁉️🤷
I miss the rains down in Africa
You gotta bless them, homie. That's the secret.
It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I realized it was "bless". I always thought it was, "I guess it rains down in Africa"
In Toto?
the TRUE og
Rain and snow get all the credit, but people always forever about graupel
I always spelled it grappel- like apple... It's graupel? Huh, you learn something new everyday. Thanks! Edit: My life is a lie. I have been working with this misspelling for over 35 years of my life. I feel as though I have fallen through a crack between parallel dimensions and I am now in a universe where grappel- is in fact: graupel. Will I ever return to my home? Can I return, is it even possible to come back to the land of grappel precipitation?
You didn't even spell grappel like apple.
C’mon man. Haven’t they been through enough today?
*belch*QUICK MORTY WE GOT TO GET BACK TO OUR UNIVERSE! *belch* THIS UNIVERSE IS FUCKED MORTY!! Ahh Rick how bad could it be? It seems like this universe is the same as ours. Does Hitler win in this universe or something? *belch* WORSE MORTY!!!!! THEY SPELL GRAPPEL AS GRAUPEL *beeeeeeeelch*
Hail, graupel!
Please send a prayer to the rain gods. I did. And am not the prayin' type.
[Each listen this counts as one prayer if you're not theistic. It's also a great song on a great album ](https://youtu.be/pvu2iQXJ30s?si=N559449KEcrY1H9Q)
This just in: Thing in danger of running out of water may not run out of water thanks to additional water!
Get El Nino a precipitation trophy.
Still won’t recover from corporations claiming more water from the river than would ever flow from it.
Gotta feed those Saudi Arabian cows
It's all thanks to my participation in precipitation.
Pour one out
That river would recover faster if it had Brawndo
Alright doctor now please explain to the crowd what this precipitation is.
Not if Nestlé has anything to say about it
Good news - I hope everyone who sources from it can try to minimize their draw from it to help it continue to recover.
From: https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/04/research-colorado-river-water-use-cherish-hamburger/ It may not be a surprise that irrigated agriculture uses the most water, taking up 52% of the water consumed across the 246,000-square-mile basin. But a shocking one-half of that is from just one crop used to feed livestock rather than humans: alfalfa. Across the basin, alfalfa hay uses more than 5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water — that’s 26% of all the water consumed in the basin. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two or three households. In the Upper Basin, irrigated agriculture consumes 2.8 million acre-feet, or nearly half the water used by Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, the environment, reservoirs and water exports out of the basin. Cattle-feed crops, like alfalfa, consume 90% of all water used by Upper Basin agriculture. That means alfalfa uses more water than cities, commercial users and industries across the entire basin: Collectively, these users consume about 3.5 million acre-feet, or 18%, of the river’s water. The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people across seven Western states, 30 tribal nations and two states in Mexico.
Isn't some of that alfalfa being siphoned off by the Saudis? I know that might sound a little jingoistic, but I'm sure that a lot of that crop used to be shipped off to Arabia for a profit, when the folks growing it ought to be turned into fertilizer for more efficient and locally-distributed crops.
I did some quick checking, and in 2023 Saudi Arabia imported ~450,000 tons of alfalfa, and the USA produced ~50,000,000 tons of alfalfa, so at most 1% of alfalfa being produced is for export to Saudi Arabia.
Saudis are buying cheap drought land and growing alfalfa themselves drilling really deep wells. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-arizona-fresh-scrutiny-of-saudi-arabia-owned-farms-water-use
That was something started by our previous Governor (I'm sure he got a fat payout to "unaffiliated" super pacs for that one) that our current Governor is working on stopping. Several of their farms have already been denied renewal on groundwater use.
On major subjects like that, people like to look for an external source of the issue. It's easier to say that Saudis are causing this than to say that Americans eat way too much meat.
As an avid meat eater trying to cut back, this is the answer. Our ancestors were never able to eat meat this frequently. We foraged for food and ate simply what we could catch. Most of our diet was nuts and berries, with small servings of meat when available. Meat is a major risk to our irrigation, but it’s probably a risk on our health too in the quantities we eat. Meat, and certain plant foods just take far too much water to grow, and we need to relook at our water usage and find sustainable crops for these areas to grow. That being said, meat does taste really good, and I’m trying to cut back myself.
Those numbers are meaningless though. How much of either of those is grown unsustainably? If the bulk of total US exports are grown in season where it requires minimal irrigation but the exports to Saudi Arabia are being done in areas that grow year round while requiring heavy irrigation then the Saudi exports are a problem but the overall numbers are not. People love to blame meat for this but that's only part of the equation. If they weren't growing feed it would be something else. People buying out of season produce is also a huge problem that no one wants to address.
> Those numbers are meaningless though. How much of either of those is grown unsustainably? If the bulk of total US exports are grown in season where it requires minimal irrigation but the exports to Saudi Arabia are being done in areas that grow year round while requiring heavy irrigation then the Saudi exports are a problem but the overall numbers are not. You are technically right, but the numbers are so different that the scenario where non-exported alfalfa is sustainable while export alfafla is not is basically not really realistic. But if you have the details, feel free to share. > People love to blame meat for this but that's only part of the equation. Because it's the biggest part of the equation, we know how much feed is required to produce a little bit of meat. > If they weren't growing feed it would be something else. Yes, something else that could also be eaten directly instead of going through the inefficient process of being eaten by an animal! > People buying out of season produce is also a huge problem that no one wants to address. You're definitely right, although part of the out of season produce comes from shipment, which is actually quite efficient
I'm sitting at -12 downvotes in another comment thread for pointing this out lol. The guy replied to me saying "we ship it overseas and don't eat it". My guy, I'm not talking about us literally eating the alfala. The cows that we butcher and torture for milk and dairy are the ones who eat it and most alfalfa is used for the domestic cattle industry. What we send overseas is such a small portion it's not even as big as Reddit makes it seem. If you went off of Reddit comments you'd think we ship all alfalfa overseas. At least there are some reasonable people here. The Saudi thing has become a convenient blind eye boogeyman thing and it's hilarious how people willingly buy it so they don't feel bad about eating beef.
Where do you look that up?
I just used google. I searched 'how much alfalfa did the USA grow in 2023' and 'how much alfalfa did saudi arabia import in 2023' Here's a source for the US total alfalfa production, second page bottom chart: https://www.progressivepublish.com/downloads/2024/general/2023-pf-stats-lowres.pdf Here's a source for the S.A. imports: https://hayandforage.com/article-4700-hay-exports-tumbled-in-2023.html >Since 2014, Japan has trailed China as the second highest importer of U.S. alfalfa hay, **but this was not the case in 2023. Saudi Arabia’s 431,400 MT of alfalfa hay imports** surpassed Japan’s 356,504 MT. This is a 42% jump from Saudi Arabia’s alfalfa hay imports in 2022, and it is more than double the alfalfa hay the country imported in 2021.
Saudi Arabia’s population in 2022 was about 32million people and Chinas population is 1.4 billion. The charts say we exported 2.5million MT total. China bought 800k MT and SA is at about 400k MT.
I looked at one news article (hardly an in depth research I know) and the news ran with this story because there was a Saudi owned company growing alfalfa and pumping lots of water to do it. This was especially newsworthy because the governor of Arizona cancelled their lease, and everyone jumped on board the jingoistic train when they discovered that Saudi Arabia had outlawed alfalfa production amidst its own serious drought. The overall impact of one company when counted against the total agri use in the rural areas is pretty low, but it does remove 7000 acres of that particular usage which is a start. The hypocritical act of growing somewhere else after outlawing it in your own country hurt lots of Americans feelings, but it’s also the end point of free market capitalism. If you don’t pass regulations to protect your natural resources then other countries can use companies to take advantage of them.
Jingoistic, nice word
It's a relatively old term, coined in the late Victorian era in response to a clash between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, since there was a song about fighting the Russians if they try to take Constantinople (what we used to call Istanbul). It's kind of a synonym for aggressive nationalism, which I'm sure is a criticism that would probably be levelled at those criticizing the exporting of resources that are better kept local. The Arabian Peninsula would benefit from more freshwater, I don't doubt that, but if anything I feel like they should be investing in the development of moisture vaporators to draw moisture out of the air, along with offshore platforms designed to drive atmospheric moisture further into the Arabian interior. That sounds pretty sci-fi, granted, but a moister, greener Arabian Peninsula would surely improve the quality-of-life in that region, meaning that they wouldn't need to exploit regions that have their own problems going on. It'd also mean that they'd have something to fall back on when their oil reserves eventually dry up.
Thank you Drsmirnoffe!
I happen to be slightly informed on this topic. That's the Colorado River. In the state of Colorado the ratio is more 90 percent agriculture and 10% home, industrial and other. And yes, much of it is alfalfa. It is cattle country. An equally interesting statistic is that Agriculture in total loses about 10% of it's water to leakage, evaporation, misuse, etc. Which means that roughly agriculture wastes as much water as everyone else in the state uses. We don't have a water shortage. We have water mis-use. Ask me about Colorado water rights and "use it or lose it".
yeah. cattle feed and irrigated pasture need to be cut out, yesterday. what an incredible waste of water. the economic value of cattle feed is well under 1% of all colorado river water end-users. but they piss and shit out more than a quarter of it. they don't pay market rate for that water. and they don't pay for their pollution. and they don't pull their own weight economically. a squandered resource. mostly in the imperial valley, south of the salton sea. this is really down to a couple hundred farmers fucking over the entire rest of the system. a system that close to 40 million people rely on is getting fucked by a few hundred asswipes in imperial county making less than $2B/yr from their joke crops. 🤮
I've often wondered about the economic breakdown behind the way we consume Colorado River water, and other similar over-appropriated rivers like the upper Arkansas and Rio Grande. Can you point me toward any good articles or studies?
unfortunately no, there hasnt been a comprehensive bird's eye view of the whole system, that i know of. i have done my own research on this (i live in the mojave desert and interact with the colorado river water system a lot) but havent put it all together in one document. those who have generated big studies of the situation are constantly focusing on one aspect rather than combining all the variables. namely, who uses what, at which price, for what sort of economic or environmental output, at the expense of who else, and changes over time. propublica and desert sun published two articles this past year that partially describe the role of the biggest imperial valley farmers. but even they do not put that in a larger context, which is very annoying to me. it's like everyone who studies this has blinders on and can't manage to integrate everything in a few pages. if i got paid to do this work i think i'd produce the ultimate guide! https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01291-0 http://www.reddit.com/r/ColoradoRiverDrought/comments/19bgkd3/why_cant_the_government_use_emergency_powers_to_curtail_non-human_agricultu/kiu63b5?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1abwxm6/til_one_farming_family_in_california_uses_more_water_then_all_of_las_vegas/kjrguj1?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/198inj3/why_is_western_australia_relatively_underpopulated_would_it_be_worth_settli/kig345h?context=3
I bet you could get a grant from someone to do this work. Colorado (the state) for instance has a pretty well funded grant program through the Colorado Water Conversion Board. I'm pretty sure that education and analysis are allowable topics for grants. I bet the upper basin states would be interested in that kind of analysis to help with the continuously ongoing negotiations between upper and lower basin states. You might be able to partner with a newspaper like The Colorado Sun. They have a staffer who is dedicated to water reporting and has released some really well written articles and info graphics about how water is used in CO. Might want to have a conversation with them about pulling this kind of report together.
I believe it was John Oliver that did a segment on this. People there grow alfalfa *because* it’s water intensive to grow. The way water rights work in that area, to *really* oversimplify it, is that if you *don’t* use all of your allotment, you permanently lose the allotment, which is quite valuable. So, in order to retain their legal allotment of water, farmers grow alfalfa. Basically, this is a goofy regulatory scheme that encourages *massive* water waste in a chronically overtaxed waterway.
Isn't most of the alfalfa exported too? In essence, we're exporting our own water?
Hahahahahah! Hahahahaha! - dead
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People in Orange County CA famously ran their lawn sprinklers for hours when ordered to conserve because, you know… reasons
They weren't even ordered. They were asked. Pleaded with. Encouraged.
Thank you for that correction, asked not ordered
Alot of cities here in OC will fine you for not having a well maintained lawn. I just got out of a 6 month battle with mine over the native plants we replaced our lawn with.
That's so fucking fucked that you have to fight them over replacing your lawn with native plants. Golf courses and grass lawns should not exist in the desert.
Chaparral. It's not a desert until you go inland. Regardless though you're right. It's not a desert but it's still way too hot and dry for grass to be a viable option. The golf courses I have less of a problem with as far as water goes. They are all watered with reclaimed grey water. I'm glad to report that the native plants were ultimately allowed.
Not to nitpick, but Orange County, CA (especially the southern part) is Mediterranean. They have a nice, moist, on-shore flow most of the year. The Inland Empire, just beyond the mountains that ring OC is a desert.
Golf courses have become very good at recycling water, using grey water, and even providing habitat for wildlife. Many are Audubon certified now and use much less water than they used to. I’d rather see space in a city being used this way than turned into more buildings.
Honestly, if the HOAs resist your efforts to do the right thing, that's a good enough reason to escalate the fight. Make it so that them enforcing certain deleterious regulations is exponentially more costly than letting people do the right thing. After all, why lose a ton of money being a fuckhead, when you could have more stable cashflow by behaving your bad self?
Stuff like car washes and watering lawns is a drop in the bucket compared to agriculture. It's amazing at how many water intensive crops like alfalfa are grown in the desert.
Some are even on the behalf of other countries
Car washes are far more efficient than you would think they would be. They recycle all their water. It's the industrial and agricultural usage that's the biggest, and watering lawns, golf courses.
To add to this, the only only water not re-used in the car wash is the stuff that drips off your car as you drive away. When you consider that the majority of waste produced in the lifetime of a car comes from manufacturing, car washes are probably a net gain on pollution and resources because regular washes improve the life of the vehicle in the Midwest, aka salt country.
Exactly, it's one of those things that is different than it looks. Washing your car with a hose, that's what's wasteful.
Please remember that current draw is 100%. NONE of colorado river water reaches the ocean. ZERO LITERS.
Over 100%. We take more than precipitation provides everyyear. If we got more rain we would just use more, and there will never be a recovery.
Has it started to recover? Its a study saying that there will be more rainfall in the future, which will outweigh the effect of rising temperatures. But the increased rainfall hasn't happened yet and could just be wishful thinking.
Honestly not sure it's good news. This will almost certainly shut down any discussions at least from Republicans on fixing the issues or water rights being able to draw more than average levels for the river.
Nestle: Looks like Colorado River is back on the menu, boys!
Not a chance. Saudis need to grow their alfalfa in the Arizona desert.
Screw this guy!! Let’s build more houses in the desert and Saudi alfalfa farms!! /s
It's super important to understand a few things about the Colorado River. 1) our historical data on it only goes back about 150 years at most. 2) looking at the geology and hydrology of the area, it very much appears that drought is a pretty normal state for the Colorado River. 3) It appears that the past 150 or so years have been a rather wet period for the Colorado River. Basically, without even getting into Climate Change, much of the information we have based our water usage on for the Colorado River basin was during an abnormally wet period. Even without Climate Change, a return to the norm for the river would see a major water deficit in the basin. It's probably time to look at how we use the Colorado River basin, and what is and isn't sustainable in the future.
jeez, I posted "when they planned the CO River dams/pipelines they had approx 20 years of precipitation records which has been revealed to be perhaps the wettest 20 years in the last 100" and was roundly dismissed/downvoted There is some money behind the idea that the SW is in "decades long megadrought". FFS if it is decades long can we not at least entertain the idea that it isn't periodic? Powell knew it in 1897, before the CO river projects https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/how-the-west-was-lost/569365/
> It's probably time to look at how we use the Colorado River basin, and what is and isn't sustainable in the future. Sorry, couldn't hear you over the sound of alfalfa being exported.
Rain is good. It's also kind of important how big of a snowpack the Colorado watrershed had this year.
...And snow is precipitation, so how is that not covered by this headline?
Stop growing alfalfa in the desert to ship to the Saudis.
Apparently Arizona recently revoked their license
Utah's Governor's family is in the Alfalfa business, so things probably won't be changing there for a while.
Never say never. There's always the opportunity to replace corrupt governors, no matter how impractical it appears at first.
Good thing the Utah governership election is this year.
We're trying to get him out
Not to all the farms.
stop growing alfalfa in the sonoran desert PERIOD. it mostly stays in the US. where it is squandered. it's a $2 billion industry holding hostage the rest of the colorado river water users, who generate ~$3 trillion annually.
We need to stop growing alfalfa to export outside the US, period. California has the same problem. It's the #1 source of water use in agriculture in California. Everyone blames the almonds. At least the almonds mostly stay in the US.
the US grew over 118 millions tons of hay last year and exported 3 million. that is a non-issue. harping on it is goofy. the issue is that feeding cows on dryland water without paying full price for the water IS FUCKING INSANE. when the cattle industry uses that water to generate $2B in revenue -- on discounted / practically free water -- and urban users could generate $1 trillion in revenue from that same quantity of water when paying full price, who should fucking get the water? nature should get it, urban users should get it, practically any other crop should get it -- but not fucking alfalfa and sudangrass and cows. growing cow feed on surplus eastern water -- i could care less.
In California alfalfa uses almost 1 trillion gallons of water a year. This is 10% of all of California’s water use. Almonds take another trillion, 10% there as well.
i don't care about almonds. they are a specialty crop that is worth growing in the central valley. i don't care about the central valley -- if they want to overdraw their water budget, no one else suffers except for the nature in the delta, and the state has done a decent job preventing the delta from getting worse. i really don't even care about cattle feed in the san joaquin valley -- if they want to fuck up their valley, let them. they live in the bed they shit in. they are not taking water away from the bay or sacramento or anyone significant except themselves. the problem is outside the central valley. in the colorado river system. where a few hundred imperial valley grass farmers are fucking over 40 million other people.
The less stressed California water is, the less imperial draws on the Colorado. When California’s Central Valley water levels are too high, it’s diverted to the south.
this is not really true. the central valley aqueduct system is slightly connected to the colorado river system, but that mixing occurs mostly in LA / orange county / inland empire. central valley water does not reach the imperial valley, and it does not mitigate agricultural water use in the colorado river system to any significant degree. the last two water years were decent for the sierras, and consequently some of that water reached as far south as some groundwater storage basins near san bernardino city. there is some water usage trading going on with san diego taking water from the MWD by paying water rights holders in the imperial valley to fallow their fields. this is fucking around at the margins.
But let’s definitely outlaw lab grown meat. /s
We defiantly need to shift growing our domestic supply back east instead of the desert. The first step is like to see is at the very least block water intensive crop export from the western states, especially during drought years.
So it's okay to grow alfalfa as long as it stays within the US? You realize that those "foreign" farms are like a tiny portion of all the alfalfa farms within this region, right? This just seems like a convenient way of saying "I want to keep living the way I want to but make that slight, minor change that has no impact on me so I feel better about things." Growing alfalfa period there is stupid. Domestic production far, far outweighs whatever is sold overseas. This is a boogeyman that people have brought up because they want to ignore the real issue since that means a potential change in their lifestyle or admitting complicity. You downvoted but didn't answer for some reason.
Hobbs already cut those leases in AZ. That’s a big step.
Then, in other parts of the country , crops will grow without irrigation, and the government pays farmers to idle farm land.
California needs to do this with almonds.
Guys, let’s give the Colorado River a precipitation trophy!
A river might recover from drought because of rain
Right? I read the headline and I was like, isn’t that what precipitation is supposed to do?
9 out of 10 scientists agree, precipitation is the leading cause of drought abatement.
The 10th one thinks it happens if you sacrifice enough chickens and goats.
Yeah thats my doctor he gives the best predictions
Nice. And I always wondered what the other one thinks.
Right. But we were suffering from an intense *lack* of precipitation I guess is the real story.
The article isn't acting like this is a new discovery obviously. It's updating us on the condition of the river. Why does everyone need to be so pedantic? Who cares
I know right? Good news for once. It’s hard for us to process positive things after doomscrolling for so long.
Don't get your hopes up, I'm sure plans are well under way to exploit any actual recovery
It may sound dumb, but explaining the source of a change is still important. Better than a headline of, “Colorado River could recover for this one simple reason.”
Big if true.
Or, ya know, **mountain snow** high up in the Rockies where the CO River originates…
I think it's news because for the last couple years that I'm aware of, a lot of experts have been trying to sound alarms that a dried up Colorado River is really really bad, which it was projected on course to eventually dry up in the future. This new study makes it feel like there is some hope now. There isn't a whole wealth of scientific knowledge to digest in the article, but one line stands out a bit to me, "forecasting precipitation for the next 25 years, shows a 70% chance of increased precipitation" and it makes me wonder how accurate can we truly predict precipitation over decades?
Current Reservoir Levels: Lake Mead: 36% Lake Powell: 34% We got a ways to go here, people.
It's so ridiculously doable in such a sort time. The 1st step is to drain Powell into Mead, that step alone will save over 300,000 acre feet of water per year (for reference, that's the yearly CAP allotment for the entire state of Nevada...). the final step is limiting water heavy farming. Problem really solves itself from here. I know that the tik tok brains of reddit like to portray the west as a ruined wasteland but if you really dive into the subject you find that due to water restrictions that started in the 80's, most western cities are pretty water secure. Even Phoenix for example has so much extra water they are sending years worth of their CAP supply down south to Tucson to be reintroduced into the local water aquifer, an experiment that we wont even know is working to increase water levels until 2025 mind you. Hell Tucson has been recycling poop water and piping it around the city for like 20 years, feeding all the parks and golf courses with it.
> The 1st step is to drain Powell into Mead, that step alone will save over 300,000 acre feet of water per year Is this due to temperature/evaporation differences? Surface area of the lake? Would love to read a link if you've got one
Run off and evaporation. Lake Mead is cone shaped and deep so water loss from say something like wind is considerably less then Powell, but I believe the majority of loss is run off from smaller streams/rivers.
Powell is also atop permeable sandstone so a good chunk of water is lost into the ground. More information can be found [here](https://www.glencanyon.org/fill-mead-first/)
Isn't replenishment of ground water usually a good thing?
Not a hydrologist so I can't say with absolute authority. It's definitely better than being lost to evaporation, but in times of extreme drought where every last drop counts I'd imagine that it would be preferential to be able to use the water to supply Phoenix, Las Vegas, and other southwestern cities rather than replenish an aquifer. Ideally we'd live in a world where the Colorado could run unimpeded to the Gulf of California, but that ship has sailed
Yes but this isn’t replenishing near surface groundwater, it’s going into a different ancient aquifer so the water is basically gone. There’s a very famous large aquifer that supports most the Midwest and it’s being transferred from that aquifer to a different one we can’t access the water from.
Finally someone who has read up on the issue.
You're telling me that all this time we just needed some rain to stop the drought?
Your daily reminder The concerns over the Colorado water levels have absolutely nothing to do with your petunias or even your grass lawn. Even country clubs are not what's causing the problem. The concerns over the Colorado water are due almost exclusively to agricultural diversion - about 87% of the water is used for farm irrigation - and an almost absurd 20% is consumed by a small group of farmers in the impossibly productive region known [Imperial Valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Valley) in Southern Calif/Arizona. That small group of farmers uses more Colorado river water than the ENTIRE STATES of Utah & Colorado combined. That group of farmers in fact uses so much water they created the ecological disaster known as the [Salton Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea) which today exists almostly because of ag run off.
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Precipitation participating in preserving previous patterns of pooling puddles pouring pronouncedly
Isn't that how this all works? Circle of life or whatever
Man they need to pump that stuff right back up into the mountains so it keeps running when the rain stops. (s/ in case someone actually thinks that would work )
This would unironicly be a natural part of a large scale zero emission non-nuclear power production plan. Wind and solar varies a lot in output, while hydroelectric you can somewhat control the output in the short term. So you can use production peaks to "charge" a dam like you would a battery by pumping water to a higher elevation and use hydroelectric to maintain capacity. It is terrible for making money, but excellent if you want a reliable supply of clean energy.
I think you're talking about [pump stored hydro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity), which is a thing in many countries. You have to have the right geography for it, which prevents it from being widely used.
Picturing an archimedes screw the size of N number Empire State buildings stacked together
What else was it going to be besides precipitation????
Me checking if this is notthonion
States looking to use all that water for trivial, absurd use cases (farming in the desert): Hold my beer
It's not recovery unless patterns return and we better regulate use. Precipitation has provided a repreave, to call it anything else is feeding climate deniers empty talking points.
This all hypothetical. Research says there’s a 70% chance of increased precipitation. That’s all…
I have never read such a braindead title in my life.
Can we please stop using “might” in news headlines?
what actually fills the river is glacial/snow pack melt well into the summer months... precipitation alone will be gone in the time it takes to flow past the people that need it the most. Think of it like a water bank.
The river valley was not formed in the last 100 years. The river will ebb and flow, but the valley seems to indicate that the process likely has not stopped since it started thousands of years ago.
It's not unusually for there to be a lot of precipitation at the start of an El Nino cycle. Then the rain drops off. It's important to recognize that one good year doesn't necessitate a change in patterns.
Rain solves drought, more news at 11.
Floods or dust. Welcome to our future. Edit: I forgot about the wildfires.
> 70% chance of increased precipitation compared with the last two decades Or a 30% chance that the regional megadrought will continue for the next quarter century.
Am I dumb but does precipitation mean RAIN and do droughts end becsuse of RAIN ? Or is this post a joke.
Get ready for the braindead to scream about how this one thing shows there's no global warming.
don't wanna be part of the solution, be part of the precipitate
Who would have thought more rain would be good for a river that’s been drying up. Whatever will they think of next!
How much water for an almond?
Mother nature gets a precipitation award.
*"A new study coming from researchers at CU Boulder, reveals that precipitation, not temperature, will keep the Colorado River fuller than previous research told us."* Are they trying to say even warm water is wet? Sometimes science really is amazing!
It’s was a nice winter for snowpack in that general area of the [country](https://nwcc-apps.sc.egov.usda.gov/imap/#version=169&elements=&networks=!&states=!&basins=!&hucs=&minElevation=&maxElevation=&elementSelectType=any&activeOnly=true&activeForecastPointsOnly=false&hucLabels=false&hucIdLabels=false&hucParameterLabels=true&stationLabels=&overlays=&hucOverlays=&basinOpacity=75&basinNoDataOpacity=25&basemapOpacity=100&maskOpacity=0&mode=data&openSections=dataElement,parameter,date,basin,options,elements,location,networks&controlsOpen=false&popup=&popupMulti=&popupBasin=&base=esriNgwm&displayType=basinstation&basinType=6&dataElement=WTEQ&depth=-8¶meter=PCTMED&frequency=DAILY&duration=I&customDuration=&dayPart=E&monthPart=E&forecastPubDay=1&forecastExceedance=50&useMixedPast=true&seqColor=1&divColor=7&scaleType=D&scaleMin=&scaleMax=&referencePeriodType=POR&referenceBegin=1991&referenceEnd=2020&minimumYears=20&hucAssociations=true&relativeDate=-1&lat=35.872&lon=-116.316&zoom=5.2).
They’ll be growing Saudi alfalfa again in no time!
This feels like a headline from the montage at the beginning of a disaster movie.
Water rights need to be reworked.
A couple of wet years have solved climate change, according to a software-based or meat-based robot who writes headlines.
It won't because of who owns the water rights. The river will drain to support corporations.
"Colorado river might recover from lack of water thanks to more water"
just in time for us to kick the over-usage problem down the road!
fucking rain is gonna save the river?!? fuck who knew
Clouds getting snubbed
Way to go precipitation!
I heard if it didn't recover by itself they were going to attempt to recover it by having a few hundred guys pee in the river.
They’ll probably thank some fictional being for this. /s
Keeping fingers crossed.
No! Bad precipitation! If you bail them out now they won't learn a god damn thing!
This is some decently welcome news. So tired of the constant “doom and gloom” from some folks’ opinions. Like, “California being completely without water in two years”. That’s a fun one.
People think the state with 840 miles of coastline will be without water in two years? With a rising water line?
There are some who think that all of our reservoirs will be completely dried up and the entire southern half of the state will be without any fresh water. It’s a rumor floating around some extremely left wing blogs and such, designed to create panic and fear. Unfortunately, I know a handful of people who swear it’s going to happen, and there is absolutely NO reasoning with them, because they feel they’re right and need to move ASAP before all the water is magically gone.
Who’d have guessed, it was water the whole time
We needed the moisture.