THE MEGADROUGHT SERIES, PART 21E

By The Time Water Gets To Phoenix

It’ll be trickling

The Central Arizona Project (CAP) winds through the Arizona desert to Phoenix. Photo by
Onel5969. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CAPCanal.2013.jpg

“There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.” ~ Edward Abbey

Overview

Thanks for humoring me on the headline. Get it? Despite the subject, I need to have some fun too!

If you drew lines from Tucson to Tucumcari, and Tehachapi to Tonopah, then connected them, you’d have an elongated diamond-shaped area in some form of drought for 23 years.

While the diamond’s Western half shows signs of improvement, the Eastern half remains in drought. But that’s just on the surface. The groundwater matters the most, and it’s in jeopardy throughout the diamond you drew and the entire west.

For the first time in many years, most of Arizona is not in any classification of drought, thanks to the atmospheric rivers that have been making their way to Arizona from the West Coast. The city of Flagstaff surpassed its average monthly snowfall…