Nevada
Rockies snowpack season for Colorado River basin off to rocky start
It’s too early to make sweeping assessments of this year’s snowpack, but some signs point to a remarkably average year in the Rocky Mountains, where snow turns to water and flows down the Colorado River into ever-shrinking reservoirs.
Las Vegas residents make up a portion of the 40 million people who rely on yearly flows from the river to drink, bathe, water crops or lawns, and more. Southern Nevada sources about 90 percent of its water from Lake Mead — part of a fickle river system that’s becoming drier every year and would need several consecutive, above-average years of snow to recover.
“Even if we have a great snowpack year, the trends are that water supply is declining,” said Abby Burk, senior manager of The Audubon Society’s Western Rivers Program, who is based in Colorado. “We are burning through an increasingly shortened timeline by playing a zero-sum game.”
As of Thursday, the entirety of the Upper Colorado River Basin sat at 95 percent of a historical median, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
That’s not necessarily the start to the banner year that Las Vegas’ water managers were hoping for, though high snow numbers don’t always translate to elevated runoff levels, said Bronson Mack, a spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Hydrologists said last year was average, but 2022 and 2023 were widely regarded as stabilizing years for the Colorado River system, bringing Lake Mead up from its all-time low level reached in July 2022.
“The twenty-first century has taught us to not count our water — or snow — before it is in the reservoirs,” Mack said in a statement. “Good snowpack years have been foiled by poor runoff and bad snowpack years have been saved by late-spring storms.”
Rural, Northern Nevada in good shape so far
Snowpack numbers are most promising in the rest of Nevada, where cities like Reno depend on recharge to the Truckee River.
With the exception of the Spring Mountains in Southern Nevada, all of the state’s basins that fuel rivers other than the Colorado were above 100 percent of the median as of Thursday.
Hints of snow in the Spring Mountains, which melts into runoff for Southern Nevada’s underground aquifers, are just beginning to show, with only 2 percent of the median.
“As you move north, things improve fairly quickly,” said Baker Perry, Nevada’s state climatologist and professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. “Northern Nevada is in pretty good shape from a snowpack standpoint: The numbers are generally well above the median.”
In much of rural Nevada, residents are dependent on groundwater wells rather than municipal water systems. Consistently poor snowpack and dry soil conditions could some day force well users to drill deeper to reach aquifers that become lower with less available water.
Climate change spells bad news
A plethora of factors may prevent snowmelt from arriving in the Colorado River’s reservoirs.
One of those is soil dryness, said Burk, of The Audubon Society.
“Soil takes the first drink before water arrives in a stream,” she said.
Almost 47 percent of the Colorado River basin was experiencing drought conditions as of Thursday, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System.
That dryness is felt in Las Vegas, as well, with five months in a row of no measurable precipitation — the second-longest such streak on record, as reported by the state climatologist office’s January drought update released on Thursday.
John Berggren, regional policy manager for nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, said other factors to keep in mind are how much precipitation falls as rain rather than snow and exactly when snowpack begins to turn into runoff.
Unfettered warming caused by climate change is causing snow to melt earlier, he said. That can cause vegetation to soak up water through evapotranspiration, the loss of water to evaporation from soil surfaces and transpiration from the leaves of plants.
“Because of climate change, snowpack numbers aren’t translating into the same stream flow numbers that we might have seen 10, 15, 20 or 30 years ago,” Berggren said.
Some years will see snowpack levels shrink early in the season, while other years start off slowly and bring snowstorms later on, he said.
“Fingers crossed for the latter, but we have to be prepared for the former,” Berggren said.
Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.
The expected vote is the total number of votes that are expected in a given race once all votes are counted. This number is an estimate and is based on several different factors, including information on the number of votes cast early as well as information provided to our vote reporters on Election Day from county election officials. The figure can change as NBC News gathers new information.
Source: Vote data via the Associated Press. Projections by the NBC News Decision Desk.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevadans are choosing their party nominees Tuesday for two closely watched congressional seats and the governor’s race, among others, as the state grapples with an affordable housing shortage, exploding energy demand from data centers and federal cuts to key state programs.
The state has a closed primary, meaning only registered Democrats and Republicans will vote in party contests after an effort to open them up failed in 2024.
Several primaries feature matchups between candidates backed by party leaders and political outsiders promising change. Come November, the governor’s race is considered one of the most competitive in the country, and holding on to the 3rd Congressional District is considered crucial for Democrats’ hope of retaking the U.S. House.
Here’s a look at the most prominent races:
Democrats seek a rival for Lombardo
Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, is considered one of the most vulnerable governors in the country this fall.
The Democrats vying to challenge him include state Attorney General Aaron Ford, who has the backing of the Democratic congressional delegation and former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Alexis Hill, a county commissioner in northern Nevada who campaigned as a candidate willing to shake things up.
They focused their campaigns on affordability, as the state continues to see a shortage of affordable housing, some of the highest gas prices in the country and cuts to federal healthcare and food assistance programs.
Ford largely ignored Hill, instead directing his attacks at Lombardo and arguing that both the governor and Trump are responsible for Nevadans’ economic woes. He is trying to become Nevada’s first Black governor.
2nd Congressional District
In the Republican contest to replace longtime Rep. Mark Amodei, who is retiring, President Donald Trump has endorsed David Flippo, a loyalist of the president who has never held elected office. Amodei and Lombardo have backed James Settelmeyer, a former state senator with a long political track record.
The district covers northern Nevada and includes Reno and Carson City, the capital, along with an immense rural expanse.
Trump-endorsed candidates have seen successful in primaries elsewhere, underscoring his unrivaled power over the Republican Party as he enters the last years of his presidency. He easily won the district in the 2024 presidential election.
The GOP nominee has a good chance of winning in November, as registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 70,000 in the 2nd District. A Republican has held the seat since the district was created in the 1980s.
Still, Democrats hope to entice the large number of nonpartisan voters in the district this fall. Their candidates include Teresa Benitez-Thompson, a former majority floor leader of the Nevada Assembly, and Greg Kidd, an investor who ran in the last cycle as a nonpartisan.
3rd Congressional District
Nevada’s other three members of Congress, all Democrats, are expected to win their primaries easily.
In the 3rd District, Republicans are battling to determine who will face Democratic Rep. Susie Lee in what is considered the most competitive congressional district in Nevada because of its narrow Democratic registration advantage, its high number of nonpartisan voters and a history of razor-thin election margins. In 2024 both Lee and Trump won narrowly.
Candidates include Trump-backed Marty O’Donnell, a composer who worked on the “Halo” video game series and ran unsuccessfully for the seat in 2024; Jeff Gunter, a dermatologist and former ambassador to Iceland; neurosurgeon Aury Nagy; and businessperson Tera Anderson.
The candidates ran on border security, energy independence and decreasing the federal debt.
Attorney general
With Ford term-limited and running for governor, the opening has prompted competitive primaries for the state’s top law enforcement post.
The Democratic side features state Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro and Treasurer Zach Conine. Both campaigned on promises to take on the Trump administration, following in the footsteps of Ford, who filed numerous lawsuits against the federal government.
For the Republicans, Trump-backed attorney Adriana Guzmán Fralick faces Douglas County commissioner Danny Tarkanian. Tarkanian, son of legendary University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, previously ran unsuccessfully in multiple congressional races.
Both candidates campaigned on “election integrity,” casting doubt on voting security. Nevada is one of the swing states in which Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, despite officials finding no evidence of widespread fraud.
Tarkanian promised to investigate voter fraud allegations, while Guzmán Fralick vowed to seek passage of the SAVE Nevada Act, which would be similar to changes Trump has sought at the federal level.
Her legislation would require all votes to be counted on Election Day, end universal mail ballots and eliminate automatic voter registration. It would almost certainly hit a dead end in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.
GOP secretary of state candidates question Nevada’s elections
Several Republicans are running for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections, including some who falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. The winner of the primary will take on Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar.
The GOP candidates include Jim Marchant, a former state lawmaker and perennial candidate who has said the 2020 election “was probably stolen”; Sharron Angle, a former state lawmaker who was part of an effort to block the certification of Nevada’s 2020 election results; and Shirley Folkins-Roberts, an attorney who received Lombardo’s endorsement and has denied there is widespread fraud in Nevada’s elections.
All the candidates support implementing voter ID, which will be on the ballot for the second time in November after the question passed by a wide margin in 2024.
Angle promises to enforce voter ID if voters pass it and supports Trump’s executive order seeking to require documentary proof of citizenship to vote. The courts have so far halted that order, issued last year, from taking effect.
Marchant wants to eliminate electronic voting machines and end the state’s universal mail ballot system. He also wants to require paper ballots, which would be counted by hand, according to his campaign website.
Folkins-Roberts said she will work to keep voter rolls accurate and up-to-date, require voter ID and ensure that election results are delivered on time. She also wants to reverse the automatic voter registration system. In an interview with News 4 Reno, Folkins-Roberts said she believes Nevada’s elections are “good,” but wants to improve voters’ confidence by making changes.
LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — We’ll start the week with a heightened fire danger with dangerous heat later this week.
TODAY
Expect mostly sunny skies with winds picking up again on Monday. High temperatures will reach 98 degrees in Las Vegas with south winds 10-20 mph and wind gusts up to 30 mph.
A RED FLAG WARNING is in place from 10am to 9pm Monday for gusty winds and dry weather, so if a fire started, it would spread quickly.
Winds are estimated to be 20-25 mph with gusts around 40 mph at times with relative humidity of 5%-15%.
Air quality is ranked ‘good’ to ‘moderate’ for dust and tree pollen. The most common pollens are juniper, cedar, willow, sycamore and palm.
TONIGHT
We’ll see variable clouds this evening with skies going from mostly cloudy to mostly clear overnight.
Wind gusts will pick up again before midnight with gusts 30-40 mph possible downslope of the Spring Mountains in the west valley.
Elsewhere, gusts will be 20-30 mph. Breezes will eventually back down to 5-15 mph overnight. Valley lows will drop to around 74 degrees.
WHAT’S NEXT
We have reached 109 consecutive days without measurable rain in Las Vegas.
No rain is in sight, but for perspective, June is the driest month of the year in Las Vegas. Fingers crossed on a hopefully more active monsoon season!
High pressure builds next with highs 5-10 degrees above normal. Temperatures will reach around 108 degrees in Las Vegas by Friday. The last time we hit a high temperature of 108 degrees was back on August 20th of last year.
Not much relief is in sight by the weekend with highs around 107 degrees and temps at or above 105-106 degrees NEXT Monday through Wednesday.
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