Column | Thompson: Colorado River faces a day of reckoning

Column | Thompson: Colorado River faces a day of reckoning

We are two and a half decades into the Southwest’s most severe drought of the last 1,200 years, and this winter’s snow dearth is one of the most extreme on record. Without an April-May miracle, human-caused climate change likely will finally catch up with the Colorado River—and the 40 million people who rely on it — in the form of a full-blown crisis later this year. “Drought” may be too hopeful a word, since it implies an eventual end. Most cli…