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This Week's News Highlights
Dust storms have overtaken Coachella. Researchers say it’s a sign of what’s to come
By: Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2026
Wind-driven dust is an overlooked environmental hazard — and one that carries a hefty price tag. A recent study estimated that dust storms cost more than $154 billion in the U.S. in 2017, alone. The evaluation puts dust events on par with natural disasters in terms of economic costs, eclipsing, for example, the 2017 wildfire season but shy of that year’s hurricane season, according to Irene Feng, the lead author of the 2024 study, who researched dust at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Since researchers last attempted to calculate the costs associated with dust pollution in the 1990s, the numbers overall numbers essentially quadrupled.
Some of the greatest costs calculated in the new study include:
$100 billion related to dust-related deaths and lost productivity from health issues, as inhaling dust particles can lead to serious respiratory illness and trigger heart attacks.
$40 billion from additional household costs from cleaning, painting and property damage.
$9.6 billion for damages to agriculture from lost water and weaker crop yields.
$4 billion in lost value of weakened renewable energy generation, because dust obscures solar panels and gum up wind turbines.
$280 million for traffic crashes caused by reduced visibility due to dust storms.
Among one of the most grave conditions Feng analyzed was a potentially life-threatening respiratory infection known as “valley fever.” Throughout much of Southwest, desert soil can be laced with Coccidioides fungus spores. When inhaled, this fungus can propagate in the lungs, potentially causing scarring and collapse of lungs.
U.S. to drastically alter Colorado River releases, Arizona officials warn
By: Tucson.com, April 16, 2026
To prop up a declining Lake Powell, the federal government plans to significantly cut Colorado River releases from Powell to Lake Mead and to boost releases from Upper Colorado River Basin reservoirs to Powell, Arizona’s top water officials say.
The measures would be aimed at preventing Lake Powell from falling below the level at which Glen Canyon Dam, which adjoins the lake, would no longer be able to generate electricity that serves more than 5 million people in seven states including Arizona, said a letter from Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke and Central Arizona Project General Manager Brenda Burman to a statewide water advisory committee.
The other and perhaps deeper concern about Powell’s falling water levels is that if the lake falls far below the level it can generate power, its ability to deliver river water to Arizona, Nevada and California would also become significantly more limited, perhaps limited enough to eventually trigger major cutbacks in water supplies for Tucson and Phoenix and for the Los Angeles area.
Bay Area city becomes first to ban data centers over power and water concerns
California may be in path of a ‘super’ El Niño. It could bring rain floods coastal erosion
By: Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2026
A potentially historic super El Niño could develop by late fall. For Southern California, the phenomenon could bring a wet winter that tamps down wildfire risk but also may trigger flooding, debris flows and coastal erosion.
Super El Niño? Forecasters announce major climate shift
By: USA Today, April 9, 2026
Scientists from NOAA say the La Niña climate pattern has come to an end. An El Niño is expected to develop, though its strength remains to be seen. Federal scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a long-anticipated shift in a powerful global climate pattern on Thursday, April 9, as worry grows about global heat patterns.NOAA says the La Niña climate pattern has officially come to an end, and that an El Niño is expected to develop later this year. This has major implications for weather worldwide, and could impact the hurricane season in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.Some computer models that scientists use to forecast climate patterns said that the oncoming El Niño could be unusually strong, and have dubbed it a potential “Super El Niño,” though federal scientists don’t use that term.
Heat Wipes Out Western Snowpack Raising Fears of Drought Wildfire
New York Times, 4/8/2026
After the warmest winter on record for many states and a blistering March heat wave that left almost no snow in parts of the American West, the region is facing a summer of serious wildfire risks and a drought that could force broad water restrictions.
AI Models Map the Colorado River’s Hard Choices-Simulations show tradeoffs as states fight over water
By: IEEE Spectrum, April 8, 2026
Nobody manages more of the Colorado River’s daily operations than the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. If the federal government follows through on its threat to impose a water-sharing plan, it will be Reclamation doing the imposing, and making decisions about how much water flows from Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs in the country.
The clearest gains are in streamflow forecasting. Machine learning techniques, pulling on satellite data and weather stations well outside the basin, now outperform traditional methods across a range of conditions. Forecasts update every hour. In some areas, managers are getting five to seven days of advance warning on flood events, compared with three in the past, which gives them time to reduce the water in reservoirs before high inflows arrive.
The tool Zagona’s group developed with Reclamation and the consulting firm Virga Labs puts the framework into practice in a web-based tool, running CRSS across more than 8,000 possible future water supply scenarios to show how different management strategies hold up against the full range of what climate change might bring. At its center is an evolutionary algorithm called Borg, which generates and iteratively refines those strategies, searching for plans that perform well across many scenarios. The result is a set of tradeoffs, not a single answer.
Water conservation works, but climate change is outpacing it: Phoenix, Denver and Las Vegas offer a glimpse of the future
By: The Conversation, April 8, 2026
We looked at three cities in the Colorado River Basin – Phoenix, Las Vegas and Denver – to understand what each could do to increase demand management amid water shortages and how far those methods could go as temperatures rise and the Colorado River’s flow weakens. The results suggest the region needs to be thinking about bigger solutions.
Lake Powell Warning Issued As Water Levels Could Break 24-Year Record
By: Newsweek, April 8, 2026
The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) reduced Lake Powell’s expected seasonal inflow by nearly 1 million acre-feet from its March outlook after record warmth and dryness accelerated snowmelt and diminished snowpack across the Upper Colorado River Basin, KSL reported.
The downgraded forecast raises the probability to about 30 percent that Lake Powell’s inflows will tie or fall below the 2002 record of roughly 964,000 acre-feet, KSL said, reporting remarks from CBRFC hydrologist Cody Moser that the probability would rise further if warm, dry conditions persist.
‘Everybody will be unhappy with it’: Burgum calls on states to make concessions for river deal
By: Review Journal, Updated April 8, 2026
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum reiterated Tuesday that the federal government favors a negotiated deal between the seven states that share Colorado River water over the resource’s allocation rather than a protracted legal battle.
Late-week storm to bring some rain, mountain snow to California before spreading into Southwest
By: AccuWeather, April 7, 2026
A slow-moving Pacific storm will bring some late-season rain and mountain snow to California before spreading into the Southwest, offering limited but welcome moisture as drought and wildfire concerns persist.