Parker Dam CA (1545)

I suppose this is where the bulk of your water would leave the river.

Yep! Thankfully there's heavy snow in Colorado this year, though I haven't heard any predictions about the impact on the river.

Well, as of right now Lake Mead's surface is hovering around 1,089 feet above sea level, or 14 feet above the trigger point when Arizona and Nevada start losing their allocation. (California's fine for another 25 feet past that.) That's 20 feet lower than it was on this day last year. Last year saw a 30-foot drop from this date to the summer low point, and the drop was 18 feet in 2013. Lake Powell, meanwhile, is 17 feet above where it was this day last year. I'm not sure how many feet that amount of water will translate to in Lake Mead, but it's not quite 17 feet. The Upper Colorado snow pack is slightly below where it was last year on this date, but we're still a month from the typical peak so there's time as long as all the snow doesn't keep going to Boston. (I get all these figures from somebody who collects the info from the Bureau of Reclamation and posts it here ... www.water-data.com )

A couple of days ago the Las Vegas paper quoted a deputy director of Interior saying there was 20% chance of Mead hitting the 1075-foot trigger in 2015, but the chance rises to 50% in 2016 if the drought holds. My paper napkin math suggests the Interior guy is a little optimistic, and is probably depending on a snowy March for the Upper Basin. But that's just me.