I don’t think that’s “instead.” While certainly there wouldn’t be a drought and a megaflood at the same time, they might take turns.
I wonder if the mafia will start supporting the fight against climate change.
“Nice coal fired plant your got here. It’d be a shame if nothing happened to it.”
The Sierras act as a gigantic reservoir for all of California, storing immense amounts of water in their snowpack during the winter, then releasing it slowly via the thaw. Humans have augmented this by building several dams fed by the snowpack to allow the flow to be regulated even more, all the way into autumn when the rains return.
But when the globe warms, there is more winter precipitation evaporating off the Paciific, but it falls as rain rather than snow. Instead of staying up in the Sierras and thawing slowly, it is likely to overload those dams - much as nearly happened to the Oroville Dam a few years back.
Then, when the rain has all washed out to sea (and probably having taken some towns with it), the capacity of those dams won’t be enough to supply sufficient irrigation water to last the entire growing season, as the dams won’t be refreshed through the early-mid summer by Sierra snowmelt.
Boom - floods and drought in the same year. Nice and ironic for late-night comedy writers to have plenty of fun with; not so nice for farmers and residents of the San Joaquin valley.
Nitpick, it’s not just “right now” and the drought conditions. Both in the desert southwest and outside it numerous US cities and agriculture is relying on drawing more water from the ground than is returned to it. The desert agriculture and now the cities are just first to feel it, in part due to the drought, but a miraculous refill of Lake Mead would only be delaying the water issues, not solve them.
I wonder how much longer before the B-29 emerges.
The Overton arm was always a bunch shallower than the two main bodies of Lake Mead. I don’t know exactly where the bomber is, but unless it’s right in the center of the arm, it’ll be showing up soon.
Although the wiki says the whole thing is one giant pile of clinging mussels in a semi-airplane shape. So probably not a real impressive monument, nor something that can be practically recovered and moved to a air museum.
<sad Boomer sounds>
What’s funny about your references (and I know exactly zero about Fallout) is that Callville Bay is about 50% gone today. By 2250+ when the game is set, it’ll be Callville salt flat. And that assumes the dam keeps operating normally, whatever “normally” means when there’s almost no water flow to work with.
This article is more about upstream Lake Powell, but they are also facing the prospect of having to shut down the Glen Canyon Dam power producing turbines. I know this has been mentioned above, but the article digs into other issues such as the environmental damage also being caused by these low levels. The Colorado River’s future is looking grim.
Usage of Lake Mead for water consumption is vastly more important than for electricity generation. Hoover Dam (which has the electrical generating facilities) is only the 54th largest power station in the country:
Glen Canyon Dam produces even less but it is also the drinking water source for a couple smaller AZ towns. It’s just another article about the poor prospect for all of the reservoirs along the Colorado.