California’s snowpack, which usually melts and feeds into waterways across the state in the spring, was alarmingly low this year. In fact, this past winter was recorded as one of the driest winters in 128 years. In late March, California Department of Water Resources officials set out to conduct the annual snowpack measurement near Lake Tahoe and found only 2.5 inches of snow where there should have been about 5 feet.
Just one state over, in Nevada, Lake Mead is also rapidly drying up. So much so that human bodies that have been long concealed in the lake are starting to emerge. At the very beginning of this month, skeletal remains inside of a barrel were discovered, and this past weekend, visitors to a recreation center at the lake discovered another set of bones. Lake Powell, another large reservoir along the Colorado River, is also at historic lows and might soon be unable to generate hydropower.
More large waterways across the Southwest are likely to recede as this historic megadrought continues.