Lake Mead, headed out? 50/50 odds. Thirsty?

Well, this is why it's a bad idea to move to a freaking desert.

"What are the chances that Lake Mead, a key source of water for more than 22 million people in the Southwest, would ever go dry? A new study says it's 50 percent by 2021.

"Make no mistake, this water problem is not a scientific abstraction, but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest."

The researchers also noted that their estimates are conservative — in other words, the water shortage is likely to be even more dire than they estimate.

there is also

A 10 percent chance that Lake Mead could be dry by 2014.
A 50 percent chance that reservoir levels will drop too low to allow hydroelectric power generation by 2017. "

Link (thanks to Nat!)

Drying up

Yikes. Long but fantastic and frightening NYT article about water use in the West.

"As one prominent Western water official described the possible future to me, if some of the Southwest’s largest reservoirs empty out, the region would experience an apocalypse, “an Armageddon."

LINK