If you care about Colorado River Basin water, it behooves you to pay attention to the snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada. It’s an entirely different watershed, but 2015 demonstrated how the interconnections in California’s plumbing have left the two inextricably linked.
The tl;dr version of two interrelated points below:
California’s drought has put pressure on the Colorado River, as Southern California turns east for more water to make up for shortfalls from the north. Despite California’s problems, the overall Colorado River Basin is holding up – able in a subpar year on the Colorado to deliver the extra water to L.A. and San Diego while ending the year with total reservoir storage unchanged from last year at this time. The system is in a tenuous but encouraging balance.
