The Hardest-Working River in the West: Colorado River Streamflow
Methods
Annual Naturalized Streamflow of the Colorado River 2022: 10.1 Million Acre-Feet
“The provisional natural flow is an early estimate of natural flows at the Colorado River at Lees Ferry, AZ. It is provided to give water operators and stakeholders insight into the natural flows since the most recent published year. Estimates depend on Reclamation’s 24-Month Study and are published following the completion of the January, April, and August studies. Estimates are developed from either the historical unregulated inflow or the forecasted unregulated inflow into Lake Powell from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center. Estimates from previous studies are provided to help users understand the evolution of the provisional natural flow. Provisional data are not used for modeling purposes in CRSS.
Please note that data is SUBJECT TO CHANGE over the entire record due to source data updates.”
Data source: PROVISIONAL natural flow data 1906–2022, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region.
Data Processing: Data was downloaded, cleaned, and imported into R studio. Script for processing provided in Data link. The Naturalized Flow Volume was plotted using ggplot. A 10-year moving average was added using the geom_ma function.