{"id":788741,"date":"2026-07-08T18:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/788741\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T18:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:10:08","slug":"opinion-western-drought-conditions-mess-with-your-head-people-are-struggling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/788741\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Western drought conditions mess with your head. People are struggling."},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"54PFALGZVZDQHLRKDTQAU3K7Z4\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Maddy Butcher produces the radio and podcast program \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/awenice.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Awe, Nice!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"QUN3KLRGLJBJHLFKMEGMWNYZS4\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">MONTEZUMA COUNTY, Colo. \u2014 I started getting a bad feeling last summer. The nearby <a href=\"https:\/\/www.doloreswater.com\/faq\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">McPhee Reservoir<\/a>, which provides water for 63,000 irrigated acres and, on good years, draws scores of boaters, seemed to be shrinking daily. Then, we had no winter. Our better reservoir, also known as mountain snowpack, hit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.drought.gov\/drought-status-updates\/snow-drought-current-conditions-and-impacts-west-2026-05-14\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an all-time low<\/a> in Colorado as well as in Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maddy Butcher produces the radio and podcast program \u201cAwe, Nice!\u201d MONTEZUMA COUNTY, Colo. \u2014 I started getting a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-788741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}