Good article about it: https://thenevadaindependent.com/art...oid-a-day-zero

Lake Mead is now at 1,056 feet above sea level. The Southern Nevada Water Authority's shallowest pumping station cannot pump water to Vegas if the lake goes below 1050, so this is very close to happening.

They installed two other pumping stations at 1,000 and 875 feet, so Vegas doesn't go completely dry if Lake Mead declines further.

However, at 895 feet, the water can no longer pass through Hoover Dam, which will cause all kinds of other problems, including ending the water supply to California, Arizona, and even some parts of northern Mexico!

The lake's maximum level is 1,219 feet. Years of low rainfall have caused Lake Mead to decline. December 2021 was a historically wet year for the western US, fueling hope that this would mean the end of the drought. However, the next four months were among the driest on record, which was catastrophic because December through March tend to be the months which produce most of the water for California, Arizona, and Nevada.

It is highly unusual for much rain to fall in these states between May and September, meaning the situation will get worse.

I wonder if desalination plants will become en vogue again. In 1990, after years of drought, there was talk of installing these along the southern California coast, especially in Santa Barbara, whose local water source Lake Cachuma was getting extremely low. It was (erroneously) estimated at the time that it would take "40 consecutive winter storms" to fix the problem -- something obviously impossible to occur.

However, in March 1991, there were two consecutive large storms. The first saturated the ground, and the second caused tons of water runoff down nearby hills and mountains, thus filling Lake Cachuma to capacity. This left sky-is-falling environmentalists red-faced, and this "March miracle" permanently shuttered talk of desalination plants.

Now things are much worse, though, and we might actually need these soon. Las Vegas will not have such an option, as it is not near any oceans.