Site Features

This page in our free multimedia library features aerial photos of Lake Nighthorse, near Durango, Colorado. The 1,500-acre reservoir, which filled for the first time in 2011, was created by...

The Colorado River is in crisis — one of the worst in recorded history. For the past several months, the seven states that use Colorado River water have been trying to come up with a plan to keep the river from collapsing. California is the single largest user of Colorado River water, which means that any effort to save the river involves California making some serious cuts. 

No joke: April 1 readings were decent across many parts of the West, but some areas are still stuck in a snow drought

The latest National Climate Assessment warns of a shrinking snowpack and serious downstream consequences.

Use this interactive map to browse photos and videos taken in wintertime from our expanding collection of free-to-use media captured by drones, planes and ground-based photographers.

A historic drought driven by climate change and temperatures that creep ever higher are partly to blame, but the factors that lead to a dry river bed are many.

This page in our free multimedia library features aerial photos of the snowpack in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. The San Juans are mostly located in southwest Colorado...

The purchase represents the culmination of a decades-long effort to keep Shoshone’s water on the west side of Colorado’s mountains, settling the region’s long-held anxieties over competition with the water needs of the Front Range, where fast-growing cities and suburbs around Denver need more water to keep pace with development.

These "rivers in the sky" can cause catastrophic flooding but are also critical for the West's snowpack

On this episode of Water Buffs, we examine how drought can harm human health, specifically how dramatic fluctuations in water availability can lead to increasingly toxic water supplies.