States across the western US are facing record low snowpack levels in the middle of the winter season. The snowpack crisis, which could mean a drier, more wildfire-prone summer, is coming as states are racing unsuccessfully against a deadline to agree on terms to share water in the Colorado River Basin, the source of water for 40 million people across seven states in the West.
“Barring a genuinely miraculous turnaround” in the remainder of the winter, says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, the low snowpack “has the potential to worsen both the ecological and political crisis on the Colorado Basin, and