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Newly released satellite images show New Mexico’s second-largest reservoir swelling to a seven year high following heavy rains in the Southwest.
They contrast Navajo Reservoir on September 20 and November 7, after what NASA, who published the images, described as “back-to-back extreme rain events” that lashed the Four Corners region. The reservoir straddles the border of northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado.
The downpours led to a “rapid” rise in the lake’s water levels, culminating in the reservoir hitting its highest level since August 2019, the agency explained. It said Navajo Reservoir stood at 108 percent of average capacity for the date, compared with September 20, when it stood much lower, at 60 percent of average capacity.
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The 60-foot water level rise was captured aboard Landsat 9, a joint NASA and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth-observation satellite.
Southwest Colorado, southeast Utah, northern Arizona, and northwest New Mexico have been hit with widespread heavy rain in recent weeks, NASA noted, adding that the Four Corners saw precipitation totals between two and four times the average from early September through early November. The downpours also led to damaging floods and forced evacuations in portions of the Southwest.
“Rainfall [in northern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado] has been well above average, at times exceptional, during the approximately 3-month period ending this week,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski told Newsweek.
He said weather stations at Durango in Colorado and Farmington, New Mexico recorded more than triple their normal rainfall since September 1.
“Some places in the mountains of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado have picked up three to six times the average over the prior months,” he added.
Lakes Mead and Powell Also Receive Boost
Lakes Mead and Powell, the first- and second-largest reservoirs in the U.S., have also seen their levels rise amid recent storms.
As Newsweek previously reported, provisional data from USGS showed Powell’s levels rose from a mid-September low of about 3,519 feet to more than 3,541 feet as of November 9. Lake Mead also climbed slightly during that period, with its levels rising from 1,038.44 feet on September 17 to 1,039.66 feet by the weekend, according to Reclamation data.
Sosnowski said AccuWeather expects above- to well-above average precipitation throughout the winter season in the Southwest. “That includes the all-important above-average snowfall for the mountains,” the meteorologist said. “That then becomes the big runoff in the spring to early summer.”
He predicted that reservoir levels at Lakes Navajo, Powell, and Mead would “ratchet up” over winter, though dips would still be possible as “the winter season can bring stingy periods of precipitation.
“Then, from Feb to May, we should see big surges in lake levels as melting snow and spring storms kick in,” Sosnowski said.
He added that El Niño—a climate pattern that can shift temperature and rainfall patterns—should play a large role during the winter season, with storms likely to pass through portions of the Southern U.S.
“The biggest and earliest bumps in reservoir levels will be closest to the Rockies and will tail off downstream along the Colorado. This is because that water is ‘grabbed up’ upstream. They will release some, of course, but it is a cascading effect," Sosnowski concluded.
As of November 8, Lakes Mead and Powell were 27 percent and 26 percent full, respectively, according to data from the Bureau of Reclamation.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood and Cristina Diciu.
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