Lake Powell water level changes last few days/weeks chart

Lake Powell is rising rapidly. Its surface elevation was 3,538.11 ft on Nov. 6, up +6.42 ft over the past week and +19.07 ft over the past 30 days, though it remains about 162 ft below full pool.^[1][2]

Recent daily trend

Date	Elevation (ft MSL)	Daily change
Oct. 30	3,531.69	+0.27 ft
Oct. 31	3,531.90	+0.21 ft
Nov. 1	3,532.42	+0.52 ft
Nov. 2	3,533.46	+1.04 ft
Nov. 3	3,534.50	+1.04 ft
Nov. 4	3,535.89	+1.39 ft
Nov. 5	3,537.11	+1.22 ft
Nov. 6	3,538.11	+1.00 ft

The rise accelerated sharply after Oct. 31: daily gains increased from roughly 0.2–0.5 ft to about 1–1.4 ft per day.^[2][3]

What’s driving it

Recent inflow was about 40,740 cfs, versus outflow of about 6,608 cfs—a large net inflow that explains the steep climb. The lake is still only about 26–27% full, and remains roughly 7 ft lower than it was on the same date in 2025.^[3][4][1][2]

For a live, interactive multi-week chart, the Bureau of Reclamation-based dashboards linked above provide 7-day, 30-day, and longer historical views.^[5][6]

⁂

• https://www.lakepowellwaterlevel.com/  
• https://reservoirbench.com/lake-powell/   
• https://lakepowell.water-data.com/  
• https://lakepowelldata.com/ 
• https://lakepowell.hydromap.com/history 
• https://lakeinsights.com/lakes/powell/water-levels 
• https://powell.uslakes.info/Level/ 
• https://lakeinsights.com/lakes/powell 
• https://lakelevelnow.com/lake/lake-powell/ 
• https://kutv.com/newsletter-daily/lake-powell-rises-more-than-21-feet-since-historic-low-in-mid-september 

Message from Charles Aulds

Here is a statement that is crucial to anyone's understanding of climate change (even those who deny the evidence that it is happening):

Climate change has never been the cause of any single extreme weather event, and never will be.

Climate change is not the cause of severe weather events. There is never a single cause of any weather event. Weather is extremely complex. The cause of all weather events is a very complex combination of factors. That's why climate models exist, to take millions of data points and try to make reliable projections about the likelihood of weather events and their severity. Scientists use statistics—mathematics—to determine the likelihood of future events and conditions. With a high degree of accuracy.

Climate change does not cause extreme weather events; it creates the conditions for them ... and the result of a steadily warming planet was predicted to be an increase in the frequency and severity of weather events. And that's happening. We're seeing lots of it. It's a demonstrated reality.

Climate change deniers would have no problems making their case if there was no trend toward greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Instead, they make the false claim that the vast bulk of evidence proving that the climate is warming has been "manipulated" by an enormous conspiracy that involves thousands of publishing researchers in the field of climate science.

But the climate change deniers are fighting more than just science; they're fighting a public that is becoming educated on the topic. Even now, it has become unconvincing to point to any single weather event as proof that the planet's surface isn't growing warmer. There will always be statistical outliers that can be used to "disprove" the existence of a trend or pattern.

The public doesn't care anymore about those anomalous weather events — it's the pattern of weather events that is beginning to emerge in the public consciousness, and the growing awareness that the warming planet creates the conditions for these events. Droughts, famines, floods, even wars. There's more to come, regardless of what the thermometer reads in my Canadian backyard on the night of January 15th. Regardless of how much it will snow this season.

There is a categorically (statistically) provable increase in the frequency and the severity of weather events (that's climate, not weather).

___

Charles

Politics is the art of having people buy into collective fantasies

That’s a sharp, cynical aphorism: politics works by turning private hopes, fears, and identities into a shared story people are willing to act on. Its power lies not merely in lying, but in making a partial vision feel like common reality.

What it captures

• Collective fantasy: Nations, parties, movements, and “the people” are partly imagined communities—sustained by symbols, narratives, rituals, and shared enemies rather than direct acquaintance.^[1]
• Mobilization: A political fantasy gives people a reason to coordinate: a promised future, a moral mission, a grievance, or an identity. Political imagination can visualize alternatives and thereby change what people treat as possible.^[2]
• Power: The “art” is getting many people to invest emotionally in that vision, then converting that investment into votes, legitimacy, obedience, donations, or sacrifice.

Where it is right

Politics often does depend on simplification. Complex societies need usable stories—“we are a nation,” “this policy will restore prosperity,” “our opponents threaten our way of life.” Such stories can create solidarity and enable action that no purely technical policy paper could inspire. Political imaginaries shape what people believe exists, matters, is possible, and who counts as “we.”^[1]

Ideological fantasy can also make policies emotionally compelling: it supplies a promised good, explains why it has not yet arrived, and induces desire for a redemptive solution.^[3]

Where it oversimplifies

Calling all politics “collective fantasy” risks implying that every shared ideal is delusional. But some collective visions become real institutions: constitutional rights, public health systems, abolition, universal suffrage, and welfare states all began as contested ideas about how society could be organized. Collective imagination is not inherently escape from reality; it can be a condition for changing it.^[4]

A more precise version might be:

Politics is the art of turning private desires and fears into shared narratives powerful enough to organize collective action.

That keeps the insight about imagination and mobilization, while leaving room for the difference between propaganda, utopian idealism, and durable institution-building.

⁂

• https://www.gu.se/sites/default/files/2026-06/ArtMonitor Working Paper 007eng MW.pdf  
• https://c4aa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Political-Imagination.pdf 
• https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-12274-8_10 
• https://nonprofitquarterly.org/dreaming-is-a-political-act/ 
• https://www.newsweek.com/id/154925 
• https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/09/apolitical_reas.html 
• https://www.studocu.com/en-ca/document/toronto-metropolitan-university/people-power-and-politics/pog-100-lecture-notes-google-docs/21495511 
• https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780822390923_A35866455/preview-9780822390923_A35866455.pdf 
• https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/articles/4277/ 
• https://www.studocu.com/en-za/document/university-of-kwazulu-natal/political-science-101-introduction-to-political-science/weeks-1-13-pols-notes/60735559?origin=AI-question-page-6 

Schindler and others on increasing Canadian Prairie aridity

Schindler and Donahue’s key argument is that Canada’s western Prairie Provinces are becoming more arid because warming is reducing snowpack and glacier-fed river flows while evaporation and human water demand rise. Their 2006 PNAS paper, “An impending water crisis in Canada’s western prairie provinces,” is the central reference.^[1]

David Schindler

What Schindler and Donahue found

• Most long-record Prairie weather stations warmed by 1–4°C over roughly 80–118 years, with much of the increase after 1970.^[1]
• Nearly half of the sites they analyzed received 14–24% less annual precipitation than at the start of their records; none showed an increase.^[2]
• Snow-cover duration and maximum snowpack depth declined across much of the western Prairies since the mid-20th century, reducing the spring meltwater that sustains rivers.^[1]
• Summer flows in major rivers fell substantially during the period when municipal, agricultural, industrial, and ecological water needs are highest.^[1]

Why they called it a crisis

Schindler and Donahue argued that aridity is not just a matter of less rain. It results from the interaction of:

• Climate warming, which increases evaporation and shifts precipitation from snow toward rain.^[1]
• Shrinking glaciers and snowpacks, which weaken late-summer river supply.^[3]
• Cyclic multi-year drought, potentially more severe than 20th-century droughts.^[1]
• Rapid population growth, irrigation, industry, and catchment alteration, which increase withdrawals and reduce natural water retention.^[2]

They concluded that these pressures could produce an “unprecedented water crisis” in the western Prairie Provinces, with declining water quantity also worsening water quality.^[1]

How other researchers framed it

Source	Position on Prairie aridity
Schindler & Donahue (2006)	Strong warning that warming, drought, and human demand are already reducing summer river flows and will create a water crisis. [1]
Natural Resources Canada, Canada in a Changing Climate (2007)	Identifies increasing water scarcity as the Prairies’ most serious climate risk, citing lower summer streamflow, falling lake levels, retreating glaciers, and growing soil-water deficits. [4]
Saskatchewan water-resources review (2009)	Notes that Schindler and Donahue’s “dramatic drying” claim is influential, but finds observed drying trends more scattered and inconclusive; streamflow responses vary by scenario because winter precipitation and snowmelt complicate the picture. [5]
Sauchyn and colleagues	Project increasing aridity, especially during the growing season, with reduced soil moisture and expansion of drier climate categories under warming scenarios. [6]

Important nuance

The broad scientific consensus is that the Canadian Prairies face increasing water stress and aridity, particularly through hotter summers, greater evaporative demand, reduced snowpack, and lower warm-season streamflow. But later assessments caution that the exact magnitude and spatial pattern of precipitation drying are uncertain: some projected extra precipitation falls in winter, and Prairie streamflow is highly variable.^[4][5]

So, Schindler and Donahue are best understood as influential early warners of a structural shift toward Prairie water scarcity—not as claiming that every location or every measure of precipitation has already declined uniformly.^[5][1]

⁂

• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1564278/         
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1564278/pdf/zpq7210.pdf  
• https://news.mongabay.com/2006/04/prairies-at-risk-from-climate-change-drought-human-activities/ 
• https://natural-resources.canada.ca/sites/nrcan/files/earthsciences/pdf/assess/2007/pdf/ch7_e.pdf  
• https://research-groups.usask.ca/hydrology/documents/reports/chrpt06_impacts-climate-change-sask-water-resources_apr09.pdf   
• https://www.parc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Sauchyn_Barrow_Fang-2009-Saskatchewans_natural_capital_in_changing_climate_an_assessment_of_impacts_and_adaptation.pdf 
• https://natural-resources.canada.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/earthsciences/pdf/assess/2007/pdf/ch7_e.pdf 
• https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/eaf7751f-406a-41bc-a3fc-046a900d6dfe/content 
• https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-03-21/albertas-brutal-water-reckoning/ 
• https://www.albertawilderness.ca/wp-content/uploads/2001-11-02-the-combined-effects-of-climate-warming-and-other-human-activities-on-freshwaters-and-wetlands-in-western-canada_2001_AL_AbBio_AR.pdf 
• https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/looming-drought-on-prairies-will-be-worse-than-dust-bowl-days-of-1930s-experts-1.605851 
• https://www.vancouverislandwaterwatchcoalition.ca/albertas-brutal-water-reckoning-part-one/ 
• https://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/En56-119-1-1997E.pdf