Utah’s Great Salt Lake hits historic low water level for second time in a year amid climate-driven megadrought

Lake levels are expected to keep dropping until autumn or winter

Utah’s Great Salt Lake has hit a new historic low water level for the second time in a year amid a climate-driven megadrought.

The Great Salt Lake dipped on Sunday to 4,190.1 feet (1,277.1 meters), according to the Utah Department of Natural Resources. That is below the previous historic low set in October 2021, which at the time matched a 170-year record low.

The US West is in the grips of a two-decade long megadrought, which recent research found is the driest period in the past 1,200 years and been influenced by the climate crisis.

Lake levels are expected to keep dropping until autumn or winter.

Dwindling water levels at the giant lake just west of Salt Lake City puts millions of migrating birds at risk and threatens a lake-based economy that’s worth an estimated $1.3 billion in mineral extraction, brine shrimp and recreation. The expanding amount of dry lakebed could also send arsenic-laced dust into the air that millions breathe, scientists say.

The state’s Republican-led Legislature is trying to find ways to reverse the trend, but it’s a daunting challenge.

Water has been diverted away from the lake for years for homes and crops in the nation’s fastest-growing state that is also one of the driest.

AP contributed to this article