Extreme Heat can also mean dehydration

Officials at the Federal Bureau of Reclamation says this month that two major dams in the west – Lake Mead in Nevada and Arizona and Lake Powell in Utah and Colorado – are deteriorating towards a “dead pool”, where stored water is too low to generate electricity from the dams. As a result, the agency has begun pumping water upstream from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming and filming from the New Mexico and Colorado leaves. It is believed that it has prevented Lake Powell from descending further to threaten Glen Canyon’s power plant.

Later this summer, the council is expected to announce the first water restrictions in Arizona, Nevada, and California from January 2022, according to reporting from the Associated Press.

During the last major drought in California, between 2012 and 2015, the government was able to use electricity from the Pacific Northwest to make its mistakes. But this could be a challenge this year as the region is once again experiencing a drought that has exerted a wildfire and damaged crops.

On July 18, Washington’s highest humidity was voted 98% “short to short” – the driest ever in the early 2000s, according to a recent report by Drought Monitor. Washington also led the country to become “extremely poor” to “poor” land in the suburbs and pastures, market wheat, and barley, while similar dry harvests were reported in Montana, Arizona, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming.

Thanks to snow and high tides from Canada, the U.S. Northwest has access to water to meet its electricity and irrigation needs, but not more, according to Doug Johnson, spokesman for Bonneville Power Administration, which generates power in the West. 31 and one nuclear plant. “It’s a very low water year, so we want to make sure everyone is looking at what they have planned and not relying on residues,” Johnson said. “It’s not something that people can rely on. There will be other powers, but it depends on the day to day and the week to week. ”

Last August, California suffered rolling the lights throughout the region when the temperature rises, as well as the need for air conditioning. The crisis has been blamed for poor preparation by government agencies, as well as the escalation of climate change, which experts say has led to extreme heat and participation in the drought. A good low water storm, high temperature, and high demand for electricity can bend, if not break, the power grid in some places, according to Jordan Kern, assistant professor of forestry and ecology at North Carolina State University, who studies water, energy, and climate change. In the coming weeks “if you get 115 or 120 degrees in the western hemisphere,” says Kern, “especially in California where everyone uses air conditioning, then the electricity will go out.”

In the past, priorities such as PG&E have been criticized management failures related to power outages, such as the failure to tell customers that shortcomings to reduce demand were imminent, and to rely on power from closed plants. This year, the same company announced plans last week to place 10,000 miles of electrical wiring Reducing the risk of burnout fires from burning electrical lines.

Kern points out that climate change has caused global warming and worsened the effects of drought. “One way to determine if the weather is bad or if there is something different about the weather is to look at the past,” says Kern. “If you go back 50 years and look at the summer and prepare for the bell plot, and then plan the plot this year, this year will not be on pay.”