2018 Droughts

[wili]

The World’s First Major City to Run Out of Water May Have Just Over Three Months Left

    It’s the height of summer in Cape Town, and the southwesternmost region of South Africa is gripped by a catastrophic water shortage. Unless the city adopts widespread rationing, the government says, the taps “will be turned off” on April 22, 2018, because there will be no more water to deliver.

        ... “It’s not an impending crisis—we’re deep, deep, deep in crisis.”

https://qz.com/1176981/the-worlds-first-major-city-to-run-out-of-water-may-have-just-over-three-months-left/



Cape Town, South Africa, Is Running Out of Water

Cape Town, home to more than 4 million, is in the midst of the worst drought to hit South Africa in more than 100 years.

City officials say they will “turn off the tap” in April when dam levels are expected to reach 13.5 percent of capacity.

The situation is dire. Dams supplying the city with usable water dropped this week to 29.7 percent, the city of Cape Town posted to Facebook on Wednesday. Only 19.7 percent of the water is usable. Several times a day, the city encourages residents via social media to conserve water.

Mayor De Lille says she hopes it won’t come down to Day Zero, but the city is already planning for that eventuality. Should the city be forced to turn off the taps, 200 water stations guarded by police and the military will be set up to ration out roughly 6.6 gallons (25 liters) of water per day per resident.

Cape Town isn’t the only city dealing with water issues in a warming world.

The World Wildlife Fund estimates two-thirds of the world may face water shortages by 2025 as droughts become more frequent because of global warming.

https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2018-01-10-cape-town-south-africa-water-shortage-day-zero

thnx to vox at poforums for these

[magnamentis]

perhaps i simply lack insight but each of such news triggers the same thought:

a) they have wind to produce energy

b) they have plenty of sunshine to produce energy

c) they have plenty of ocean water to make drinkable by osmosis (energy consuming i know)

so why do such regions like CT or Andalucia or other regions with little water but being oceanside
and blessed with either wind, sun or both produce more drinking water from the ocean by through above mentioned method. it exists, it's done but by far not sufficiently to solve their shortages.

perhaps someone who is more savvy in that field of work/sciences can enlighten me so that i can either push more or forget the idea because of (no clue why)

[oren]

perhaps i simply lack insight but each of such news triggers the same thought:

a) they have wind to produce energy

b) they have plenty of sunshine to produce energy

c) they have plenty of ocean water to make drinkable by osmosis (energy consuming i know)

so why do such regions like CT or Andalucia or other regions with little water but being oceanside
and blessed with either wind, sun or both produce more drinking water from the ocean by through above mentioned method. it exists, it's done but by far not sufficiently to solve their shortages.

perhaps someone who is more savvy in that field of work/sciences can enlighten me so that i can either push more or forget the idea because of (no clue why)

Israel would have been deep in the same problem as Capetown by now had the country not built several desalination plants under a strategic program (a surprise in a country where most political thinking is very short term). Unfortunately this is not done with renewable energy but with mostly fossil-based electricity. Cost of home-use water has gone up considerably, but I guess it's better than having no water.
Note: Israel is also the world leader in using recycled water for agriculture.

Here's some info from 2015:

Desalination industry
In 1999, the Israeli government initiated a long-term seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination program. Israel Desalination Enterprises, or IDE Technologies, built SWRO plants in Ashkelon in 2005, Hadera in 2009, and Sorek in 2013. Built for the Israeli government, each plant produces clean water from the sea at low cost. Today, the country has a total of five large-scale SWRO plants, including the Palmachim plant (GES) and the Ashdod (Mekorot) plant (which is currently undergoing commissioning).

The Sorek plant, located about 10 miles south of Tel Aviv, is the largest and most advanced SWRO plant in the world. It has the capacity to product 627,000 m3 of water daily, making desalinated seawater a mainstay of the country’s water supply. The Sorek plant is the first desalination plant to use pressure vessels that are 16 in. in diameter rather than 8 in. This reduces costs by requiring less piping and other hardware; costs are also minimized through the use of highly efficient pumps.

It is estimated that half of the country’s water will be supplied by desalination by 2016.

[gerontocrat]

perhaps i simply lack insight but each of such news triggers the same thought:

a) they have wind to produce energy

b) they have plenty of sunshine to produce energy

c) they have plenty of ocean water to make drinkable by osmosis (energy consuming i know)

so why do such regions like CT or Andalucia or other regions with little water but being oceanside
and blessed with either wind, sun or both produce more drinking water from the ocean by through above mentioned method. it exists, it's done but by far not sufficiently to solve their shortages.

perhaps someone who is more savvy in that field of work/sciences can enlighten me so that i can either push more or forget the idea because of (no clue why)

I believe Spain and other places have expanded desalination plants for mainly for coastal urban regions. But - people still have to eat, and Spain has a huge agricultural export industry.

Agriculture (as a rule of thumb) consumes 4 to 5 times the water used for urban purposes.

Water is heavy - damn heavy - shifting it away from the coast uphill is expensive. In the north of Jordan, a lot of the water comes from the Jordan Valley. The average lift was (in 2004) about 750 metres -  say 2500 feet. As a result electricity for the pumps (though heavily subsidised) comprised more than 50% of operating costs.

In California, even with the most sophisticated irrigation systems (miserly delivered to each plant individually (and often originally developed in Israel)), as the 2012-2016 drought progressed farmers had to abandon crops).

And the last problem is inertia - even in Jordan it was a tough job to get anyone to take water loss reduction seriously (often linked to places with serious water shortages) and to provide the capital to redesign water systems. And getting people to change their crop types? Forget it.

There are places where it works, and places where it will not  or if it does work, at vast energy requirements and cost. To find out if desalination + renewable energy would work requires proper  field work in several disciplines.

However, sometimes progress is made - so do not give up.


ps: Water wars is up there with climate change in the US defence departments's list of security threats (even if Trump and his acolytes pretend it is not there).

[magnamentis]

thanks for the useful replies, in general and considering the places with sufficient renewable energy potential to which places like SA, southern spain, israel as well as california belong, it obviously works the way i think but takes a certain effort based on either political will and/or economic benefits which IMO is mostly torpedoed through lobbyism in favour of coal and other dirty energy and therefore feasibility lacks due to not being compatible with subsidized sources.

resume: same story across the board, all that's needed is there but is not profitable or self-supporting due to politically forced use of dirty energy that in fact would be obsolete once
the irresponsible greedy gangsters who call themselves our leaders would do what they were
elect for :-(

EDIT: BTW i simply don't get why to do the right things have to be profitable?

IMO the opposite is the case, it's like real love, who really loves is ready to loose for the best of the loved ones. (i know this is simply put while to see loved ones happy is the greatest possible profit after being happy ourselves hence not a loss at all, perhaps just not the way we want thngs to be which is how we are back to ego-control )

[ritter]

so why do such regions like CT or Andalucia or other regions with little water but being oceanside
and blessed with either wind, sun or both produce more drinking water from the ocean by through above mentioned method. it exists, it's done but by far not sufficiently to solve their shortages.

Short answer, money. Desalinization costs a lot of money, not just for the energy to desalinate and pump the water to where it's needed but to construct and operate the plant. To provide a city with water requires a huge investment. California has a few desal plants but they are generally only used in the most dire situations and then are only supplemental. There is also the issue of what to do with the brine that is left over. It is not particularly beneficial to the marine environment to "dump it back where it came from." 

[Archimid]

Hopefully  one day that brine can be separated into usefull components and sold, making the economics of desal competitive.

[oren]

In Israel there was talk for years of sending the brine to the Dead Sea via an artificial canal, helping to stabilize its deteriorating level, and even gaining some net energy via hydro thanks to its being 400m altitude below sea level. But this talk has not come to fruition yet.
OTOH, back to the thread's topic: the minister for agriculture recently arranged a mass prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem to break the multi-year drought. I'm not holding my breath for results.

[Sigmetnow]

Hopefully  one day that brine can be separated into usefull components and sold, making the economics of desal competitive.

Lithium...?

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538036/quest-to-mine-seawater-for-lithium-advances/

https://gigaom.com/2010/03/10/will-seawater-stave-off-a-lithium-squeeze/

[gerontocrat]

In Israel there was talk for years of sending the brine to the Dead Sea via an artificial canal, helping to stabilize its deteriorating level, and even gaining some net energy via hydro thanks to its being 400m altitude below sea level. But this talk has not come to fruition yet.
OTOH, back to the thread's topic: the minister for agriculture recently arranged a mass prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem to break the multi-year drought. I'm not holding my breath for results.

The Dead Sea sinks by about 1 metre per annum - and is now really two seas. The project was supposed to be a joint Jordan / Israel deal, it was a hot topic back in 2004, and even then the idea had been around for decades.

Water scarcity was a real problem back then - Israel had already put a dozer through UN resolutions on water sharing. Things cannot have got better.

It's high up on the US defence department's list of security threats in the region. If drought is defined as demand greater than supply, then the region is always in drought.

[Sigmetnow]

U.S.:
Snowpack Near Record Lows Spells Trouble for Western Water Supplies

Months of exceptionally warm weather and an early winter snow drought across big swaths of the West have left the snowpack at record-low levels in parts of the Central and Southern Rockies, raising concerns about water shortages and economic damage.

Drought spread across large parts of the Western United States this month, and storms that moved across the region in early January made up only a small part of the deficit. Runoff from melting snow is now projected to be less than 50 percent of average in key river basins in the central and southern Rockies.
...
With little fresh snow falling this winter and warm temperatures that make it hard to keep machine-made snow on the slopes, New Mexico's Taos Valley ski resort was able to open fewer than 20 of its 112 runs during the past weekend, and many of the region's other large resorts have faced similar conditions. Athletes training for the winter Olympics have had to fly to Canada and Europe to find good snow conditions.
...
Using the most sophisticated climate models and weather data from various ski regions, the scientists concluded that it will be too warm for snowmaking at many lower elevation resorts in the eastern half of the country within the next few decades. By 2050, the winter season will only be half as long as now, averaged across all 247 resorts in the study. ...

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15012018/snow-drought-ski-western-water-supply-risk-climate-change-economy

[Alexander555]

Day zero for Cape Town is brought forward one week to 22 april.

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/drilling-on-cape-flats-aquifer-starts-as-cape-town-dams-dry-up-in-drought-20180111

[Alexander555]

https://www.news24.com/Green/News/poisonous-and-running-out-pakistans-water-crisis-20180108

[Sigmetnow]

More on (the personal side of) the Cape Town water crisis:

Cape Town Is 90 Days Away From Running Out of Water
http://time.com/5103259/cape-town-water-crisis/

[LRC1962]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-we-get-our-drinking-water-from-the-ocean/
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534996/megascale-desalination/
Should not be posting at this time (3AM) as I get really stupid.
A few few thoughts.
1) Up to now mankind could get away with for the the most part, land fresh water.
2)As pointed out, issues of energy costs building and upkeep costs,  amount of land needed for plant, pollution, where to place intake to minimize ecodamage and what to do with waste. All these things add to and create costs all on their own. The problems now are that things are becoming much more urgent and therefore the risks taken will be far greater to get water.
As for Cape Town. Remember you are talking about South Africa which because of penalties now being paid politically and economically for the decades of apartheid and the artificial economy it created plus the degradation of the majority  of its people it is not capable to respond quickly to disasters. Because it is in Africa and still has the illusion of being a forefront nation it has many difficulties that cause major problems when disaster strikes.
Before we get to caught up with casting blame for this problem Puerto Rico still has no power for over a million people in spite of being part of the richest nation in the world.
Note I do know that we are to keep away from politically charged statements, but as someone born in one of the poorest nations on earth, I get very tired of the holier then thou attitude that they are lazy and stupid. Most times they are living in situations they have absolutely no control over. How much change can you make earning less then $4000 a year?

[TerryM]

LRC1962


I've never known the poor to be either lazy or stupid. Lack of opportunity, no education WRT money, a lack of self confidence and plain bad luck are more often responsible for their plight.


Terry
edit - Sorry for drifting so far from the topic.

[wili]

Scribbler on how Iranian drought is increasing political instability (shades of Syria):

https://robertscribbler.com/2018/01/20/how-climate-change-is-fueling-irans-political-instability/

[Alexander555]

They consumed 618 million litres per day last week. That's more than the weeks before. If they are all building up a personal supply they will mis their target.

https://mediashaft.com/cape-town-water-supply-near-point-no-return-reservoirs-run-dry/

[oren]

Amazing. Now it says Day Zero is Feb.1, less than two weeks away.

Starting from Feb 1, the 50 litre/day rule will be implied for every person. Feb 1 is being called as “Day Zero”, as the residents will turn off their taps and will have to queue for water supplies at about 200 collection points in the city.

[Paddy]

More on (the personal side of) the Cape Town water crisis:

Cape Town Is 90 Days Away From Running Out of Water
http://time.com/5103259/cape-town-water-crisis/

Re Cape Town: It doesn't help that so much of the freshwater in South Africa has been contaminated by run-off from mining. And, of course, mining, industry and power generation continue to contribute significantly to water demand. If RSA could be weaned a little more off coal, it might become a little less water-stressed.

[Sleepy]

Non-water savers urged to join Team Cape Town water savers as Day Zero moves forward to 12 April 2018.
http://www.capetown.gov.za/Media-and-news/Non-water%20savers%20urged%20to%20join%20Team%20Cape%20Town%20water%20savers%20as%20Day%20Zero%20moves%20forward%20to%2012%20April%202018

[Sigmetnow]

California is having a near-record low year for snow. So is a lot of the Western U.S.
https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/955839442362753024

[Sigmetnow]

Non-water savers urged to join Team Cape Town water savers as Day Zero moves forward to 12 April 2018.
http://www.capetown.gov.za/Media-and-news/Non-water%20savers%20urged%20to%20join%20Team%20Cape%20Town%20water%20savers%20as%20Day%20Zero%20moves%20forward%20to%2012%20April%202018

As bad as this disaster is, it is heartening to see evidence that, when properly motivated, people can still come together for the common good.

[Sleepy]

Non-water savers urged to join Team Cape Town water savers as Day Zero moves forward to 12 April 2018.
http://www.capetown.gov.za/Media-and-news/Non-water%20savers%20urged%20to%20join%20Team%20Cape%20Town%20water%20savers%20as%20Day%20Zero%20moves%20forward%20to%2012%20April%202018

As bad as this disaster is, it is heartening to see evidence that, when properly motivated, people can still come together for the common good.

They have to, they knew it was going to be bad.  We have a south african blog here in Sweden who provides a lot more personal info on water saving tips (and lots of other stuff) down there, they started that blog post in October. This will probaly help (from the article above):

Our desalination, aquifer and water recycling projects aimed at providing additional water are ongoing but will not provide sufficient supply to help us avoid Day Zero this year. They will, however, help us to become more resilient in weathering our next dry season.

Also adding a link to a water viewer for Cape Town if someone's interested:
https://citymaps.capetown.gov.za/waterviewer/

Edit; also adding a previous news article from the same place:
http://www.capetown.gov.za/Media-and-news/Day%20Zero%20now%20likely%20to%20happen%20%E2%80%93%20new%20emergency%20measures

We can no longer ask people to stop wasting water. We must force them. We have listened to the comments of thousands of residents asking for fairness. Council will on Friday be voting on a punitive tariff that will charge residents exponentially higher rates for water usage above 6 000 litres per month.

[wili]

Scribbler has a new...scribble...on the Capetown situation.https://robertscribbler.com/2018/01/24/the-day-the-water-ran-out-climate-change-day-zero-swiftly-approaching-for-cape-town/

[Sleepy]

Thanks wili, and for starting this thread. I think that mashable article by Freedman is worth linking to by it's own, also quoting the first paragraph:
mashable.com/2018/01/24/cape-town-south-africa-will-run-out-of-water/

It's 2018. Donald Trump is president of the U.S., Elon Musk will soon send a sports car into space aboard a massive rocket, and Cape Town, South Africa, will run out of water in 79 days.

Edit; adding this. What can you do with 50 litres per day.

[Alexander555]

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-01-17-eastern-cape-drought-rapidly-overtaking-the-cape-town-crisis/#.Wmt_UJAqOrU

[Susan Anderson]

@Sleepy. That's a terrific post, thanks.

[Alexander555]

If you look at Africa on the map, the area with the drought. That's mainly the Congo basin. And that's mainly tropical rainforests and wetlands. What is going on there ? Did they cut down everything?

http://eldoradocountyweather.com/climate/world-maps/world-drought-risk.html

[Alexander555]

If you look at Africa on the map, the area with the drought. That's mainly the Congo basin. And that's mainly tropical rainforests and wetlands. What is going on there ? Did they cut down everything?

http://eldoradocountyweather.com/climate/world-maps/world-drought-risk.html

Is it wrong to assume that the rainforst works like a natural airconditioning ? The forest sucks water out of the soil, large quantities every day. Most of it ends up in the air, trough the leaves. It keeps everything wet and cools it a little .Thats almost like a closed system. And the rain that comes from the outside ends up in the rivers, and transports heat out of the system. And the forest prevends the sun to shine directly on the soil. As soon the forest is gone the water circulation stops, and the sun shines on that soil for 12 hours every day (the equator) .And there is no winter, only the nights to cool it down. Normaly it will get hotter and hotter, and if you look at that size. That's going to be the biggest oven on the planet. And in the north they already have the sahara desert. Or do you think i'm wrong.

[Sigmetnow]

“The current #snow situation in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains is extremely bad. California and Colorado River basin #water availability will be far below normal this year, barring a dramatic and unlikely influx of storms.”
     https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/961685694174425088
     Image below.

[Alexander555]

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/water-restrictions-continue-in-kzn-20180209

[Sleepy]

Cape Towns water dashboard is here:
http://coct.co/water-dashboard/
They moved day zero forward to mid-May 2018 "due to a decline in agricultural usage. But Capetonians must continue reducing consumption if we are to avoid Day Zero. There has not been any significant decline in urban usage.".

[Sigmetnow]

Cape Towns water dashboard is here:
http://coct.co/water-dashboard/
They moved day zero forward to mid-May 2018 "due to a decline in agricultural usage. But Capetonians must continue reducing consumption if we are to avoid Day Zero. There has not been any significant decline in urban usage.".

This is a good reminder that one can’t simply draw a straight line from history to determine the end of times.  People do change their behavior, when they understand their survival is at stake, or if they can visualize a tangible reward.  (But the speed of that change is another matter.)

[Archimid]

Hopefully  one day that brine can be separated into usefull components and sold, making the economics of desal competitive.

Lithium...?

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538036/quest-to-mine-seawater-for-lithium-advances/

https://gigaom.com/2010/03/10/will-seawater-stave-off-a-lithium-squeeze/

New desalination membrane produces both drinking water and lithium

https://newatlas.com/metal-organic-framework-filter-water-lithium/53356/

The key to the process is metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which boast the largest internal surface area of any known material. Unfolded, a single gram of the material could theoretically cover a football field, and it's this intricate internal structure that makes MOFs perfect for capturing, storing and releasing molecules...

Currently, reverse osmosis membranes are the most commonly-used technology for water filtration, and they work on a fairly simple principle. The membrane's pores are large enough for water molecules to pass through, but too small for most contaminants. The problem is that to work, these systems require water to be pumped through at relatively high pressure.

MOF membranes, on the other hand, can be more selective and efficient. Researchers at Monash University, the CSIRO and the University of Texas at Austin have now developed just such a membrane. The design was inspired by the "ion selectivity" of biological cell membranes, allowing the MOF material to dehydrate specific ions as they pass through. Better yet, these filters don't require water to be forced through, saving on energy use as well.

[Sigmetnow]

Letter From a Bed in Cape Town
Conspiracy theories and pee etiquette in a South African drought
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/letter-bed-cape-town

[Sigmetnow]

“It hasn’t rained (meaningfully) in California since the beginning of January. Nothing much in sight until at least early March.

Some ‘rainy season’ we’re having, sheesh ”
https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/963241902115049472
Image below.

[Sleepy]

Cape Towns water dashboard is here:
http://coct.co/water-dashboard/
They moved day zero forward to mid-May 2018 "due to a decline in agricultural usage. But Capetonians must continue reducing consumption if we are to avoid Day Zero. There has not been any significant decline in urban usage.".

This is a good reminder that one can’t simply draw a straight line from history to determine the end of times.  People do change their behavior, when they understand their survival is at stake, or if they can visualize a tangible reward.  (But the speed of that change is another matter.)

Sorry, missed that comment.

I'll provide the same answer as to your comment in reply #24 above:
They have to, they knew it was going to be bad.

History tells us that the human instinct to survive is our most powerful drive, yet we still tend to think that disasters only happens to someone else.
 
If we look at the four main groups when it comes to climate change; deniers, skeptics, incrementalists and realist, only the realists will pay attention to the threats, while the other three groups are buzy visualizing tangible rewards.

Water usage reaches record low – let’s see how low we can go
http://www.capetown.gov.za/Media-and-news/Water%20usage%20reaches%20record%20low%20%E2%80%93%20let's%20see%20how%20low%20we%20can%20go

Day Zero, the day we may have to queue for water, has moved out to 4 June 2018 due to the continued decline in agricultural usage, and also as a result of Capetonians reducing their water usage in cooperation with the City of Cape Town’s efforts to bring down consumption.

Over the past week, consumption has been lowered to 526 million litres per day. This is the first time that the weekly average usage has remained under 550 million litres due to the City’s pressure management interventions and the efforts by our residents to use as little water as possible.

Importantly, dam levels are at only 24,9% compared to 36,1% last year and 43,3% in 2016. Though the dam levels are much lower than a year ago, we have more information and more control over the system that supplies water to the city. Our continued interactions with the National Department of Water and Sanitation have led to much improved data-sharing and analysis, allowing for more reliable modelling and dramatically improved control over dam levels.

[Alexander555]

Groundwater provides drinking water for at least half of humanity.

https://www.news24.com/Green/News/for-global-water-crisis-climate-may-be-the-last-straw-20180213

[Alexander555]

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/11-cities-next-up-for-water-crisis/

[Sleepy]

Importantly, dam levels are at only 24,9% compared to 36,1% last year and 43,3% in 2016. Though the dam levels are much lower than a year ago, we have more information and more control over the system that supplies water to the city. Our continued interactions with the National Department of Water and Sanitation have led to much improved data-sharing and analysis, allowing for more reliable modelling and dramatically improved control over dam levels.

This tracker: http://water.eighty20.co.za/
States that 10% of a dam's maximum storage is considered unuseable.
Latest dam level data: 2018-02-12
If that's true, then there's only ~15% usable water left.

[Shared Humanity]

Groundwater provides drinking water for at least half of humanity.

https://www.news24.com/Green/News/for-global-water-crisis-climate-may-be-the-last-straw-20180213

And almost universally, we are drawing ground water out far faster than it is being replenished. This is unsustainable.

[Sigmetnow]

Is Perth really running out of water? Well, yes and no

Perth’s drinking water supplies are largely safe, thanks to early investment in the use of groundwater and in technologies such as desalination. But somewhat ironically, ... the future supply of lower-quality water for irrigation and to support ecosystems looks far less assured.

https://theconversation.com/is-perth-really-running-out-of-water-well-yes-and-no-90857

[Sigmetnow]

Current U.S. drought maps. 

“The U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) is a weekly product that provides a general summary of current drought conditions. Multiple drought indicators, including various indices, outlooks, field reports, and news accounts are reviewed and synthesized. In addition, numerous experts from agencies and offices across the country are consulted. The result is the consensus assessment presented on the USDM map. http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu   http://drought.unl.edu “

[Sigmetnow]

Pacific Institute:
“In the U.S., some inland water districts are considering brackish groundwater desalination, which is generally easier and less costly than seawater desal. @Interior's national assessment of brackish aquifers could help determine viability: https://water.usgs.gov/ogw/gwrp/brackishgw/ #desalination ”

https://twitter.com/PacificInstitut/status/980532875521961985

[Alexander555]

https://watchers.news/2018/04/03/drought-in-argentina-and-uruguay-the-most-expensive-weather-disaster-of-2018/

[Sigmetnow]

U.S.:  snow drought in the Rocky Mountains

“Today, April 9th, is the average peak date for snowpack in Colorado, meaning this is the day we usually have the highest snow of the season and it melts down from here. Today, we're 68% of average.”
     https://twitter.com/lukerunyon/status/983400261015109633
Images below.

[Daniel B.]

Yes, Colorado was south of the jet stream for most of the winter.  The majority of the storms tracked across Montana, which is experiencing near or record high snowfall totals this year.

[gerontocrat]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/11/day-zero-water-crises-spain-morocco-india-and-iraq-at-risk-as-dams-shrink

Worth a read.

'Day zero' water crises: Spain, Morocco, India and Iraq at risk as reservoirs shrink
A new early warning satellite system reveals countries where shrinking reservoirs could lead to the taps completely drying up

Where to post something like this?

Places becoming less liveable ?
Climate, agriculture food?
Expansion of deserts?

We haven't got a water resources thread, even though climate change is bound to make the problems worse - too much water, not enough water.
US Department of Defence has (or had) water wars as a high risk in the US National Defence Strategy.

[TerryM]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/11/day-zero-water-crises-spain-morocco-india-and-iraq-at-risk-as-dams-shrink

Worth a read.

'Day zero' water crises: Spain, Morocco, India and Iraq at risk as reservoirs shrink
A new early warning satellite system reveals countries where shrinking reservoirs could lead to the taps completely drying up

Where to post something like this?

Places becoming less liveable ?
Climate, agriculture food?
Expansion of deserts?

We haven't got a water resources thread, even though climate change is bound to make the problems worse - too much water, not enough water.
US Department of Defence has (or had) water wars as a high risk in the US National Defence Strategy.

I wonder just who they expect to be their enemy?
Terry - the Canadian