Even an average snowpack this year could spell trouble for Lake Powell

Snow season is off to a rough start for Utah and its neighbors. Most of the West is in a snow drought, with so little white stuff covering the ground that the region hit a 25-year low.

If the trend continues, it could be a recipe for disaster for the Colorado River and its reservoirs. That includes the nation’s two largest, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which prop up a system that provides water to communities on the Wasatch Front and tens of millions of other Americans across the West.

A new report from more than a dozen Colorado River experts projects that even near-average snowpack this winter could send the two reservoirs to record lows in 2026.

“At the end of next summer, that amount would be lower than the storage has been since Powell and Mead initially filled,” said report co-author Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University. “So, we would be in unprecedented territory.”

A reservoir storage crisis would shape how much water is available next year for Utah agriculture, which accounts for around three-fourths of the state’s use, as well as for cities and the environment. That’s why basinwide water consumption should be urgently reduced, he said.

With Utah and the six other Colorado River Basin states locked in a stalemate over how to divide the shrinking river after 2026, the timing couldn’t be worse.

“There just isn't much room to maneuver if you immediately begin to implement the new agreement when the system is in an unprecedented crisis,” Schmidt said.

Those talks have caught a lot of national attention. And will do so again as state negotiators and experts converge on Las Vegas for December’s annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference. But the report’s authors don’t want people to forget that the impacts of dwindling water supplies could very well show up before a new seven-state agreement is in place next fall.

“Everyone has been focused on the drama, and rightly so,” said Eric Kuhn, former manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and co-author of the report. “These negotiations are important. But what are we going to do next year?”

Spring runoff into Lake Powell is likely to be well below average in 2026, Kuhn said. That’s not only because of disappointing early snowfall totals. Dry soils will also likely soak up runoff before it ever makes it to rivers and cities. And because the 2025 drought drew down many smaller upstream reservoirs, their water managers will want to fill them before sending anything downstream.

On top of that, Schmidt said not all of the water in Powell and Mead is realistically usable.

“We're closer to the edge of the cliff than we realize.”

A lot of the conversation about the reservoirs’ decline focuses on the dead pool, where levels are so low that water can’t move through the dam at all. But Powell is already much closer to another critical threshold, when water levels dip below the dam’s usual outlet pipes, or penstocks.

Once the water level is no longer high enough to travel through the penstocks, it has to go through other outlets not meant to be used on a permanent basis and can no longer generate hydroelectric power.

“We're overstating how much water is realistically available,” Kuhn said. And if the West has another winter like last year’s, “we could have some serious problems.”

The report projects that if the region has a repeat of last winter, spring runoff would add just over 9 million acre-feet of water to Powell and Mead. One acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of ground a foot deep in water, or 325,851 gallons.

And if people use about as much water as usual, the report estimates that nearly 13 million acre-feet would be consumed by Americans or delivered to Mexico by next September. The imbalance between the amount of water coming in and going out would leave a deficit of around 3.6 million acre-feet. That amount would need to come from somewhere, like Powell and Mead.

The real danger with that scenario, Schmidt said, is that it would leave the two reservoirs with less than 4 million acre-feet of realistically accessible water to carry over into the following year.

“Which means if we did it again the next year, we're done,” Schmidt said. “Then we're into the world of utter complication.”

That could push the federal government to prop up Lake Powell by either releasing a bunch of water from northeast Utah’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir or reducing how much water leaves Powell to go to California, Arizona and Nevada. Both options would be filled with risk, Kuhn said. And neither would be a lasting solution to the bigger problem — the West’s overall water supply is decreasing as climate change fuels warming temperatures and worsening drought.

As the talks drag on, Schmidt said the possibility of lawsuits between the states increases, and the chances that the federal government may need to intervene grow.

“I used to say that I was very hopeful because there was too much at stake, and I couldn't imagine a scenario in which, at the last minute, the states didn't pull a rabbit out of the hat,” Schmidt said. But now, “I am somewhat worried that we may not pull that rabbit out of the hat.”

The states have a federal deadline to share their proposal for a new river-sharing agreement by mid-February.