As drought conditions deepen over the Western half of the United States, wildfires are raging in more than a dozen states. A cursory comparison between the wildfire and drought maps shows the co-presence with parts of the High Plains farm belt, indicating the ominous consequences for wheat and corn crops. The impact in California is huge.
The top states, based on acreage of the wildfires, are Texas: 77 fires/345,482 acres; New Mexico, 45 fires/201,076 acres; Nebraska, 5 fires/86,804 acres; Oklahoma, 36 fires/75,404 acres; and Arizona 23 fires/27,757 acres; with Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, California, Alaska, Montana and South Dakota represent about 224 additional fires covering more than 65,000 acres, according to the Fire Weather & Avalanche Center (FWAC, fireweatheravalanche.org).
The main rivers draining the southwestern drylands of North America are the Rio Grande and the Colorado. Both are dangerously low.
Fresh Water News, aligned with the Water Education Colorado (watereducationcolorado.org), reported in late January, that for the Colorado River, “the two big reservoirs, Mead and Powell, in January 2000 were at 95% of capacity with a combined storage of 47 million acre-feet. But by April 2022, they are projected to be less than 30% full with a combined storage of 15 million acre-feet.
“Both reservoirs reached historically low levels last summer, holding the least amount of water since they began filling in the 1930s and 1960s respectively. The inflow into Powell last spring and summer was the second lowest on record….
“‘Everything associated with Lake Powell is critical to the operation of the whole basin,’ said Patrick Tyrrell, Wyoming’s representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission.
“‘We’re not quite sure how the lake will operate if that water elevation approaches the top of the penstocks,’ he said. It’s also not clear how water can be released from the reservoir at that lower level, sometimes called dead pool, he added.” (https://waterdesk.org/2022/01/as-colorado-river-reservoirs-shrink-feds-ask-for-work-arounds-for-2022/)
The water levels not only affect irrigation needs, but also the capability for hydro-electric power.
The Rio Grande River is also in dire condition. At nearly 1,900 miles long, the Rio Grande is runner-up only to the combined Missouri-Mississippi system in length within the continental U.S., extending from its headwaters in the San Juan Range of the Colorado Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico at Brownsville, Texas. But, by the time it reaches El Paso, Texas, all that exists is a dry riverbed.
El Paso Matters media organization reported on April 6 that “projections show El Paso farmers are expecting only 18 inches of water per acre, rather than the full 48 inches, said Jesús Reyes, the manager for El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1.
“‘For cotton farmers, the irrigation water is not coming until June; that means a lot of land is going to be laid out, fallowed,’ Reyes said.
“New Mexico farmers face a grimmer picture, said Elephant Butte Irrigation District Manager Gary Esslinger, estimating only three or four inches of water per acre, total.”
In the “Wheat State,” the University of Kansas Agronomy eUpdate (eupdate.agronomy.ksu.edu) reported on April 14: “While the crop in central Kansas is still mostly not undergoing severe drought stress, the recent increase in biomass as the crop goes into reproductive development will be accompanied by an increase in crop water demand; thus, more precipitation will be needed shortly to avoid yield losses due to drought. Consequently, crop conditions deteriorated considerably during the last few months, and the latest USDA-NASS report suggests that only around 30% of the Kansas wheat crop is in good or excellent conditions.”
States affected by Severe, Extreme, and Exceptional drought extend from Texas up through to North Dakota, and westward to the Pacific. [https://www.drought.gov]
