Lake Powell, a vital reservoir, plunges toward unprecedented low levels as water crisis deepens in US west

According to The Guardian, Lake Powell — the second-largest reservoir in the United States — is on track to fall to unprecedented lows this year after a historically thin snowpack failed to replenish it. The reservoir, which stretches one hundred eighty-five miles along the Colorado River on the Utah-Arizona border, currently sits at about twenty-two percent of capacity, or roughly five point six million acre-feet. It dipped below that level briefly three years ago, but those two thousand twenty-three readings came in winter, at the reservoir's seasonal low point; spring runoff then lifted it back to nine point six million acre-feet by June. This time, experts say, the recovery isn't coming — lending fresh urgency to stalled talks over conserving a water source tens of millions of people across the American south-west depend on.

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