As the sun sets over the Pinal Mountains, casting long shadows across the historic storefronts of Globe and the massive tailing piles of Miami, a digital clock is ticking toward a deadline that could redefine life in the rural West. At midnight on December 31, 2026, the current agreements governing the Colorado River will expire. Without a new deal, the river's legal framework reverts to a century-old hierarchy that places Arizona at the very back of the line—a scenario ASU Professor Rhett Larson calls "the Thunderdome."

The fleeting and shrinking snowpacks across the West are the result of a warming climate, said Enrique Vivoni, director of the Center for Hydrologic Innovations at Arizona State University.

“There might be winters where there might be more precipitation, it's just not going to persist as a snowpack for as long as it has in the past,” Vivoni said. This, in turn, will whittle stream flows.

Sarah Porter of Arizona State University said a lot of people in the state already understand they need to help and "change what they're doing with water use."

"I am asked all the time by people who are concerned and want to know what they can do in their homes and businesses," said Porter, director of ASU's Kyl Center for Water Policy. "I was even contacted by an incarcerated individual who felt that the state prisons could do more to conserve water."

Sarah Porter of Arizona State University, said a lot of people in the state already understand they need to help and "change what they're doing with water use."

"I am asked all the time by people who are concerned and want to know what they can do in their homes and businesses," said Porter, director of ASU's Kyl Center for Water Policy. "I was even contacted by an incarcerated individual who felt that the state prisons could do more to conserve water."

While "we can’t conserve our way out of this problem" by itself, some cities are going to have to step up the amount of conservation that occurs, she said.

Enrique Vivoni, an Arizona State University professor who directs the school’s Center for Hydrologic Innovations, worked on the study. He said the planes add a level of precision to snow data that can help water managers fine-tune their strategy for releasing water from reservoirs.

“What's critical about this is the timing,” he said. “When will that water that's previously been in the snow and now is in the soil, when it will arrive to the rivers and eventually to the reservoirs, and that timing information is really important for water management.”

“These airborne datasets are helping us train artificial intelligence models using satellite imagery,” said Enrique Vivoni, director of the Center for Hydrologic Innovations at ASU. “That allows us to turn daily images into estimates of snow cover and water content.”

The timing of snowmelt is a critical parameter for water resource management, particularly in systems dependent on seasonal runoff.

It’s not just the Rockies feeling the heat. Here in Arizona, researchers found snow is disappearing at a dramatic pace. More than 90% of the snow in the Upper Black River Basin, a key watershed feeding the Salt River system, melted in less than three weeks.

The finding comes from a new study by Arizona State University and the Salt River Project, which used airborne surveys to track snowpack across the region. That system supplies water to millions of people in the Phoenix metro area, meaning even small changes can have big impacts.

“Water users in Maricopa, Pinal and Pima County who receive CAP water, that includes tribes, cities and industries, will all experience cuts if the cuts get very deep,” Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, said in an interview.

Results from a new airborne snow survey over northeastern Arizona found that due to a dry and warm winter, most of the snow water measured in January and February had melted by mid-March, offering water managers an unusually clear view of how quickly the season changed. 

“For the first time, we were able to quantify the changes in Arizona’s snow conditions using airborne observations,” Vivoni said. “Despite near-average conditions early in the season, a snow drought across the western U.S. since late December has limited accumulation."

One major rub between the lower- and upper-basin states, for decades, has centered on water use, according to Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. While stakeholders downstream are using their full allocations, upstream states like Wyoming have not — and they want to protect their potential full allocation.

“Both arguments have some reasonableness, and that’s one of the reasons why we are where we are and negotiations have stalled,” Sorensen told WyoFile.