Jump to content
Model Cars Magazine Forum

It's not just California. The southwest is in a serious draught.


Petetrucker07

Recommended Posts

Today I went over the new Hoover Dam, bypass bridge, well it's a few years old now. I stopped by the Dam hotel to look at Lake Mead. It's in a sad state. It's down a good 30 feet! I remember as a kid going on family vacations there and the lake never looked like this. I hope this winter will yield a significant amount of rain fall. The "experts" are predicting a record El Nino cycle. Prey, cross fingers, hold your tongue just right, only turn to the left or whatever you do, for us to get some rain. Here are a few pics taken today.%7Boption%7D20150825_111039_zpsst6iw4ot.jpg 

20150825_111015_zpskjr2769t.jpg 

This pic the arrows show where the was and where it is today.

20150825_111039_zpsst6iw4ot_edit_1440560

Edited by Petetrucker07
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for putting up the photos of the Lake Mead shoreline. That part of the world has always been one of my favorite places, and I was fascinated by Hoover Dam as a kid, read everything I could find on it. When I finally saw it, as an adult, it still blew me away. All that water in the middle of a barren desert has an otherworldly kind of beauty, and the dam itself is really something. It has its own very stark and functional beauty in its form, but there are striking decorative elements as well. Simply a great feat of engineering, especially impressive when you consider the time period it was built.

I've been saddened for years that the lake levels are so low, and that overuse of the planet's water resources are having such a visible effect on some areas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[]

Here's a bit of Lake Mead history via my stamp collection.  The town of St Thomas, Nevada was vacated because it was located in what would be man made Lake Mead. 

Here's a photo of the post office, they had taken the roofs off of all the buildings so they wouldn't try to float.

H

I recently saw on a web site that due to the drought that the town was above water and could be explored.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I went to see the Hoover Dam maybe 10 years ago, as a side trip while visiting Las Vegas. Amazing, awesome. This was back when you could still drive (and walk) along the top of the dam –I assume that's now gone due to "terrorism?" We took a guided tour of the dam, stood at the top of the dam and leaned over to look straight down along the gently arcing 600 feet of concrete. It was an amazing sight (and more than a little scary for a guy like me who isn't exactly fond of heights!). And we toured the inner workings of the dam, the generators... way cool. What an engineering marvel. It's a trip I'll never forget.

Anyway, I remember then seeing the water level of Lake Mead, and the different colored stone along the shore where the water level used to be about 30-40-50 feet higher... so a disappearing Lake Mead is nothing new.

Like jb said... create a lake in the middle of the desert and you get what's coming to you...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

create a lake in the middle of the desert and you get what's coming to you...

Not exactly accurate.

The lake is a result of damming the Colorado River which has run through the area for eons. The flow of the river has depended on snowfall for ever, so that is nothing new for the lake.

The entire Mojave Desert area has been much, much drier than normal for a decade or so now. 

G

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not exactly accurate.

The lake is a result of damming the Colorado River which has run through the area for eons. The flow of the river has depended on snowfall for ever, so that is nothing new for the lake.

The entire Mojave Desert area has been much, much drier than normal for a decade or so now. 

G

I realize that the lake is a result of damming the Colorado. But the Colorado has flowed for centuries without any "help" from us. Damming a river that runs on and off through desert and expecting it to maintain consistant flow (and for Lake Mead to remain at a constant level) is foolish.

Remember the old margarine commercial? Don't fool with Mother Nature...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can still walk across the d. But the whole terrorism thing is what stopped truck traffic across the bridge and now with the bridge, all vehicle traffic is stopped. I think when our baby us a few years old, we will take a trip to the dam. Hopefully in a few years, the dry, very dry condition if the desert won't be so severe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is the flip side of your drought. Growing up in Colorado the rivers that feed the Colorado River you could almost walk across without getting your feet wet . Lakes and reservoirs would be way low also because so much  water had been allocated to Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California.  

The  joke was "a record snowfall" Guaranteed green golf courses in the Dessert. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do keep in mind that it's not just a simplistic tie between lake levels and precipitation, you also have to factor in water allocation between the lakes, and who decides to keep how much in which lakes and how much to let loose for irrigation and when that's done. This site  http://www.water-data.com/  charts all of that, folks who love to graph things can work out the details among the site's Water Database flyouts for each lake in the Colorado system. Then on top of that, you have waste. By virtue of being in Phoenix, my idiot apartment complex gets its water from the Central Arizona Project's Colorado river-fed canals, only to waste it by having floods which water the roadways instead of the plants and trees. I do my bit by telling 'em where the leaks are, but they refuse to listen.... Less waste all the way around would mean less water drained out of the lakes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Harry, we here in Nevada don't just fool with Mother Nature, we outright trick her.

Acres of concrete and steel in the middle of the high desert causes untold changes in the weather. Add to that decades of nuclear testing and you have a recipe for disaster.

G

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Harry, we here in Nevada don't just fool with Mother Nature, we outright trick her.

Acres of concrete and steel in the middle of the high desert causes untold changes in the weather. Add to that decades of nuclear testing and you have a recipe for disaster.

G

Didn't think about the nuclear testing. Does it still have an affect????

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While the government claims no lasting effects, there are life long residents here that will tell you a different story. 

Areas of Utah, which were down wind from the test site, still have a higher than normal rate of cancer. Monument Valley is still contaminated and is specifically named as being a source of cancer for decades of film stars and crew.

There is a reason the test site itself is Federal Land and off limits to the public.

Remember the test site and Area 51 are two separate entities.

Area 51 had it's own issues with toxic waste disposal in the 90's. The place is such a secret they couldn't acknowledge/disclose health issues amongst employees even under oath.

G

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No kidding. I checked out bing maps birds eye view and you can see plain as day the old town of St. Thomas. And many of the foundations of houses, intersections and cross streets of the town still... after all those years! Some of the street paths go almost all the way across and up and down Lake Mead!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What the non-Californians don't get is that this drought is impacting the whole US.  Californian's central valley is responsible for about 11% of all the produce in the US.  It is fed from runoff from the snows in the Sierras as well as flow from the Colorado river.  As this drops, the cost of water goes up and the cost of produce goes up.  It doesn't matter where you are in the US, if you had fruit or vegetables to eat in the last week, there is a very high probably that at least some of it came from California.  Prices go up here, they go up everywhere.  This is why the drought here matters to everyone.  Most people don't think of California as a farming state, but it is.

Edited by Pete J.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...