After years of drought, Lake Mead, which is on the Nevada and Arizona borders, reached drastically low levels last summer, but water levels have since started to recover because of above-average precipitation and snowpack that melted throughout the summer. The water levels are a promising sign for boaters who flock to the area by the hundreds of thousands. The encouraging news also bodes well for RV and boat storage operators.
While the news is uplifting, one way to measure the rising levels of the lake has caught the attention of the media, including Newsweek magazine that covered a unique story about it last week.
A shipwrecked speedboat in Government Wash, a designated undeveloped camping area at Lake Mead, has often been used as a symbol to document Lake Mead’s water levels in times of drought. Scientific measurements are used to document the water level, which is shared on the website Lakes Online daily, but the lake’s visitors have used the shipwrecked speedboat to mark the change.
On Monday, Lake Mead’s water level was just over 1,066 feet, which is more than a 20-foot increase since this time last year, but it’s the images of the disappearing boat that provide more of a visual depiction of the rising levels. According to a video on social media, the foot of the boat is just about a foot away from being completely submerged once again.
A video shared by Las Vegas Locally sharing the news received more than one million views in a week, making the story not good news for boaters and RV boat operators alike, as well as social media influencers.
Read Newsweek’s story by clicking here.
In another Newsweek story, the media outlet reported: “Water reduction efforts are underway, and states in the lower Colorado River basins, such as Nevada and Arizona, are experiencing mandatory water cuts. Earlier this year, Nevada, Arizona and California agreed to cut an additional 3 million acre-feet of water in exchange for a payment from the federal government.”
