Sitting at 8,180 feet, the Upper Stillwater Dam stands sentry, holding back water that will eventually make it to Utah’s Strawberry Reservoir. In the winter, storms roll in and drop hundreds of inches of snow across the High Uinta Mountains that surround this basin. Come spring, that snow melts, winding its way down through the watershed until it’s captured behind the dam. As the weather warms in the summer, the water doesn’t flow in but out. Gravity carries it all the way down 80 miles of pipe and aqueduct — and through two other reservoirs — to the faucets and spigots of the millions of people who live in the most populated cities of Utah.
Most folks who water their lawns, do their dishes or take a shower with this water don’t think about the journey each drop takes to reach them. It’s simply there. They may be familiar with their local municipal water supply, but probably less so with Strawberry Reservoir or Stillwater Dam. They’re nearly 100 miles away. But it’s a massive system: one which captures water from across the Continental Divide and carries it to civilization, acting as an insurance policy against the region’s inevitable droughts. This cache of water, even at the driest of times, ensures that when folks in Utah’s basin and ranges open their taps, something happens.
But that water is no longer a given in the West.
The region has been hit by a widely covered trilemma: a lack of winter snow, record-breaking spring heat waves and a long-sustained drought that blights the resources on which growing populations rely. On their own, each complicates the region’s ability to fulfill water rights to users. Together, they strain the system earlier and harder, threatening the water supply of the West in a way that’s never been experienced before.
By April 1, most of the region — including Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming — reported record-low snowpacks before unseasonably warm temperatures sent snow-water equivalents plummeting, which quantifies the actual water content rather than just the depth of the snow. In terms of a water budget deficit, this year’s regional snow-water equivalent measures at only 25% of the 30-year median, which is already considerably lower than past 30-year medians. Experts predict that, between evaporation and the dry ground soaking up water, the Colorado River basin states are likely to be able to deliver only 10-15 percent of the water needed to sustain all water rights in the region.
That’s where reservoirs like Strawberry come in. All reservoirs serve as storage for specific regions and water municipalities, but most across the West can hold only enough water for a year or two of current use rates. That doesn’t add up to much in years like this one. While most water systems in the West were designed with tremendous storage-to-flow ratios in mind, modern demands and drought have made multiyear storage increasingly difficult to hold. California’s surface reservoirs can only provide about 1.25 years of total supply when full without any additional inflow. In states like Utah and Washington, reservoirs are typically designed for one- or two-year cycles and are currently being drawn down at double the normal rate during dry spells, prompting officials to warn that without major reductions in use, even the largest federal reservoirs could effectively empty in as little as three to four years during extreme drought.
Water managers often describe water in banking terms. With decades of drought, increasing populations, warmer temperatures and less snow, the only way to make ends meet is with a “spend within your means” approach. But states within the region have long had the highest per capita water use rates in the nation. We have a tendency, in keeping with the metaphor, to blow the budget.
This year, there isn’t much to spend. And the savings sitting inside reservoirs across the region are shallow.
“The Colorado River watershed has been in trouble for some time. That’s not new. The Great Salt Lake has been in dire straits for some time. That’s not new,” says Daniel Swain, a climate and weather scientist for the University of California and prolific social media meteorologist. “This is one of those unsubtle years. … This is the ‘uh-oh’ moment.”
Out of roughly 70 river basins across the western U.S., only five are at or above median snowpack right now.
Impact of a warm winter
In February, the White Pine Nordic Touring Center, a local cross-country skiing venue in Park City, Utah, was green. Aside from a few patches of snow, it looked more ready for tee time than winter sports. A Getty image of the golf course where the touring center is located made the rounds on the internet as an omen of just how bad this winter was. More than half of ski resorts in some parts of the West reported early closures or failed to open at all. It was also hot, causing snowmaking to be untenable for most areas. Open-range cattle grazed through February and March, and irrigation spigots hummed with water in months that are frozen most years.
This past winter was the warmest in the West in 131 years of recorded history. It melted into a summer-like spring, which brought an unrelenting heat wave that shattered high-temperature records in 180 cities. At least seven states experienced 100-degree weather before the end of March.
The only other comparable winter was 1977, which occurred before snowpack data was recorded. Though there were a few late storms that year, Time magazine reported that new “accumulated moisture was but a drop in the bucket of water needed to prevent massive crop failures, hydroelectric power shortages, widespread economic losses and mounting tensions over water allocations.” One government official worried that “we’ve got a good chance of another Dust Bowl.” Such alarming comments were made during a year with more water and fewer demands on it than 2026.
Out of roughly 70 river basins across the western U.S., only five are at or above median snowpack right now, and demand historically increases when supply decreases — and supply decreases because of both human-made and natural causes.
In that relatively small nook of Utah, the Strawberry Reservoir loses between 20,000 and 25,000 acre-feet of water to evaporation every year. To cover its total outflow, it needs about 200,000 acre-feet of water flowing back into it. “If we use the forecast we have right now — which I believe (is) higher than what reality is going to be — our inflow to Strawberry Reservoir this year will be about 30,000 acre-feet,” Jared Hansen, the director of water policy for the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, which manages the reservoir, says. “We’ll barely cover the evaporation.”
This year, most Westerners will be living under some form of water restriction. They were firmly in place in Utah before the end of winter — some water conservancies had shaved whole months off landscaping water and were communicating that people should familiarize themselves with their meter limitations. In Idaho, one reservoir in the Salmon Falls tract south of the city of Twin Falls is sitting at just 13% of capacity, prompting irrigation deliveries to be shut off as early as late May or mid-June — weeks before summer crops even hit their peak water demand.
Though such restrictions are somewhat familiar, folks in the West aren’t exactly accustomed to conservative or restricted water use. Of the 10 states with the highest water use per capita, eight of them are in the West. Idaho tops the list with 184 gallons of water consumed per person per day, but Utah’s not far behind with 169. Wyoming and Arizona closely follow.
Populations are growing, water use is historically high, the snowpack was abysmal, and the trends of temperatures and precipitation are not encouraging. Water managers are already making plans on how to divvy up dwindling resources. “The past is not a perfect representation of the future,” Hansen says. “If the past repeats itself, fantastic, we’re in great shape. If there are some differences from changes in the climate, then this is a step in becoming more prepared for that and figuring out how to divide up a smaller pie.”
Laura Haskell, the drought coordinator for the Utah Division of Water Resources, explained that she and her colleagues generally have long relied on the snowpack to add around 20% capacity back into the reservoirs in the spring, and will continue to do so. That didn’t happen this year. Haskell doesn’t think there’s a need to panic “yet,” as long as the West doesn’t have another winter like it did this year. But that’s simply banking on the future.
“The region has been hit with a trilemma: a lack of winter snow, record-breaking spring heat waves and a long-sustained drought that blights the resources on which growing populations rely.”
Was building more the solution?
What will it mean to have a few trillion gallons less water in the West this year? Bea Gordon, a snow scientist from the Desert Research Institute, says that one obvious potential is an increased risk of wildfire. This has borne out, with more than 15,000 fires burning 1.5 million acres before the end of March — that’s over 230% of the 10-year average. Hansen says the north side of Strawberry Reservoir, an area that’s usually buried under several feet of snow all winter long, caught fire in January. As this summer kicks off, every state in the West is expected to face an above-normal threat of wildfire, according to the latest projections.
It’s also going to be a difficult year for agriculture. With less snow and warmer temperatures, whatever moisture is present will evaporate more quickly and water allotments just won’t go as far as they have in years past. Produce, wheat, rice, sugarcane and nut production are all under drought conditions and likely to struggle. But ranching will especially. Cattle have less to eat and drink during droughts, and their backup feed, alfalfa, requires lots of water; the industry is expecting prices to soar.
Some communities are already building new backup solutions — reservoirs for their reservoirs, in some sense. In Washington County, Utah, where Zion National Park and the desert city of St. George are located, a new reservoir is under construction, and another will break ground this fall. This is happening alongside the very expensive process of building a system that recycles, refilters and reintroduces water back into the county’s water system. “We have plans to build over a billion dollars’ worth of infrastructure here within the next five to 10 years,” says Zach Renstrom, the general manager of the Washington County Water Conservancy District. “That has to be done. Running out of water is not an option. And so we plan to build it.”
The same logic drove the construction of the Strawberry Aqueduct in the 1960s. When the West needed more water, engineers went and got it. They bored tunnels through the Wasatch, dammed tributaries and rerouted Colorado River Basin water over the Continental Divide so it could flow into a desert metropolis that grew larger than anyone thought it would. For a century, the solution was to build more, capture more, store more. But today, Utah’s reservoirs sit at roughly 39% of capacity. Across the West, the question now isn’t whether to build more — it’s whether there will be enough to fill the reservoirs we’ve got before they run dry.
This story appears in the June 2026 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.