We have more dry lakes and rivers than I’ve ever seen in 26 years of being here. Lake Powell is about 30 feet away from its minimum power pool, while Lake Mead is just 5 feet away from a critical threshold that forces most of its turbines offline and about 90 feet away from stopping all electricity generation completely. I believe that the Hoover Dam is probably equivalent to about two large nuclear power plants. The ground is so dry here that any rain that we get is just going to get absorbed it, won’t even go to the rivers. The heat island effect is burning all the moisture right out of the clouds, it seems. We just lost St. Mary’s Glacier, which was around since I was a little kid. Some expert told me that we need something like 20 or 25 feet of rain for things to be okay.
Interesting to see when diesel gets expensive, they break out the batteries. Electric mining trucks on open pit mines might be popular too: