Drought intensifies and spreads

Also: Introducing Data Center Watch, alfalfa exports fall, federal agency trolling

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

The monsoon is on its way, apparently, but seems to be delivering more lightning than rain to many areas that are grappling with wildfires. Meanwhile, the drought is intensifying and spreading in almost all parts of the West, especially in the deep Southwest.

Streamflows are dropping, too. The Animas River in Durango has fallen to about 200 cubic feet per second, and it’s only at about half that by the time it gets to Farmington, New Mexico’s, new surfing wave. The Rio Grande already dried up in Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago (but got a good boost from a thunderstorm early this morning). WyoFile reports that the Snake, Wind, and Bear Rivers are all at record low flows for this date, even though the snowpack was about average this winter.

And, of course, the wildfires continue to burn. The Dragon Bravo Fire on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim has burned through 112,000 acres so far, with only 9% containment. The Monroe Canyon Fire in southwestern Utah is at 55,642 acres with 7% containment, and is causing power outages in surrounding communities. The Turner Gulch Fire northeast of Gateway is still growing “due to continuous hot and dry conditions and erratic winds.” And the Elkhorn Fire north of Durango has settled down a bit at 317 acres, but officials worry forecasted hot and dry conditions could reawaken it.

Below are some satellite moisture index maps, with blue being moist and red indicating dryness. The top image shows Dove Creek and areas south of there. This was dryland farming country for many years (Pinto Bean Capital of the World), but irrigation from McPhee Reservoir on the Dolores River was later extended out to Dove Creek. Problem is, their water rights are junior to the farmers in the Montezuma Valley near Cortez, so when reservoir levels are low, they tend to get less irrigation water. Here you can see the difference between 2023 (on the left), when snow, river, and reservoir levels were high, and this year (right), when they are not. What stands out to me is that some fields are still being irrigated this year, despite the drought, as is indicated by the circles of bright blue. But there are more fallow fields now, and the areas around the fields are especially dry.

Here are two more images showing the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s farms south of Ute Mountain in 2023 compared to 2025. Again, some irrigation is still reaching the fields, but apparently far less, given the number of fields that are apparently fallow.

📈 Data Center Watch 📊

The Land Desk is adding another beat to its roster, the Data Center Watch, which is just to say that I’ll be covering data centers and their economic and environmental ramifications a bit more frequently from here on out. Why? Because they currently are proliferating throughout the West: There are 93 data centers in the Phoenix area, 54 in the greater Denver area, and eight in Albuquerque, with many more on their way. And every one of them uses outsized quantities of electricity and water, straining power grids, and throwing utilities’ resource planning into disarray.

Cheyenne, Wyoming, is already home to six data centers. That doesn’t count Meta’s $800 million center that is under construction there, or energy firm Tallgrass’s proposed facility that would pull 1,800 megawatts of electricity from new, dedicated natural gas plants and renewable power installations (presumably solar and wind). Down in Tucson, city officials are considering Amazon Web Services’ proposed Project Blue, a massive complex that is poised to consume up to 2,000 acre-feet of water per year and become Tucson Electric Power’s largest single customer.

In Alaska, a company is looking to build a large data center and a dedicated natural gas plant that would run off of oilfield methane. Numerous data centers can be found along the banks of the Columbia River, drawn there in part by the relatively cheap and abundant hydropower. In Montana, a proposed data center would use all of the power generated by NorthWestern Energy’s existing resources. And Pacific Gas & Electric expects new data centers in Silicon Valley to drive a 10 GW increase in electricity demand over the next decade, which is about one-third of today’s forecast peak demand for California’s grid.

The biggest concern with these sprawling warehouses packed with processors is their power consumption. Each one can draw as much electricity as a small city — the proposed Cheyenne server farm would use more power than all of the state’s households. As recently as half a decade ago, most utilities weren’t expecting the speed and magnitude of the big data center buildout. Now it’s hitting hard, and coinciding with increased demand from a growing number of electric vehicles and electrified homes, and utilities are scrambling to bring new power sources online to meet the projected demand growth. This includes geothermal, wind, and solar power — each with impacts of their own — but also new natural gas plants and even small nuclear reactors. Some utilities are cancelling plans to retire coal plants to keep enough generating capacity online.

In other words, the data center boom is likely to radically reshape the energy landscape of the West, and will spur more debates over the costs of this sort of economic development and the impacts our cyber-world has on the environment and humanity.

📈 Data Dump 📊

In some ways, I guess you could say that as alfalfa is to the Colorado River, data centers are to the Western power grid: they both suck up a lot of the resources. That doesn’t make them bad. Alfalfa mostly goes to dairy cows, which make cheese and ice cream and other really good things. Data centers power annoying AI art, sure, but they also make everything internet possible, including me sending this newsletter to you.

Anyway, it’s worth tracking both — alfalfa and data centers, I mean. So here’s a quick update on hay exports from the U.S. (which includes alfalfa and other hay), as well as a look at acreage planted in alfalfa (excl. other hay) over time. Exports seem to have peaked in 2022 and are now in decline. Nevertheless, sending alfalfa and other hay overseas is big business.

🤯 Annals of Inanity 🤡

You might think that our federal agencies under Trump would be content to wreck the environment and trample civil liberties in a quiet, not-so-noticeable way. But no, of course not: They’re so proud of their racism and fetishization of fossil fuels that they plaster social media with their proclamations thereof — they are trolling us, in other words.

Above are just two recent examples. In the first one, the Department of Energy fawns over a sparkling chunk of coal. In the other, the Department of Homeland Security posts an 1872 painting by John Gast titled “American Progress.”

Both are gross in their own way.

What the hell kind of sexualization of coal — i.e. “She is the moment” — are they going for in that first one? Friggin’ perverts, if you ask me.

As for the second, it glorifies the crimes the American military and white colonial settlers perpetrated against the Indigenous peoples in order to get more Lebensraum, one might say (it makes sense to use Hitler’s term given that he was inspired by the U.S.’s policies toward Native Americans). Not only is the use of the word “Heritage” in this way a dog whistle to white supremacists, but it’s also kind of weird to be talking about defending the “Homeland” against immigrants when, in the image, the immigrant invaders are the white settlers, and the folks trying to defend themselves and their homeland are the Indigenous people (and wildlife) fleeing from the settlers.

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

I don’t want to leave y’all with that awful taste in your mouth, so here are a couple of nicer images of one of my favorite flowers out there.