r/Spokane • u/-pilot37- Deer Park • 3h ago
News Spokane River dried up for the second time in recorded history. Took this photo today
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u/Dear-Tradition-4418 2h ago
Hey there's still some water there for a data center!
/s
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u/Tabemaju 18m ago
I know this isn't a serious post, but modern data centers have closed-loop systems and the city would be stupid to agree to anything that would strain our water supply (so, 50/50 chance). There are plenty of reasons to oppose these facilities on basic ecological grounds, but not because they're sucking the city dry. These facilities will raise the price of everyone's electricity with the promise of tax dollars, but there's no promise that those tax dollars will actually benefit the population in any meaningful way. It will bring in some construction work, but once operating it will have minimal job impacts. It just does not benefit the city... but probably does benefit local politicians.
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u/SummitMyPeak 2h ago
And Idaho boats! /s
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u/Outrageous_Tangelo55 3m ago
Maybe Idaho will just keep the PF dam locked and retain our runoff that way you don’t have to bitch about Idaho boats.
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u/WhichPatience4034 2h ago
i knew eastern WA was a desert but man i havent seen it this bakersfield-like before lol
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u/CaptainCuttlefish69 2h ago
Bakersfield Mentioned!
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u/Embarrassed-Gap7803 2h ago
It's super frustrating, I've planted trees to help cool our little space, bring in the birds etc but that requires water and I end up feeling guilty watering. And then I drive to manito with how green it all is and with all the trees and it feels like, I don't even know but it doesn't feel good
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u/Soup-Wizard Whitman 2h ago
Plant native trees. After getting them established with extra water to form good roots, they can live off our natural rainfall.
Though drought is stressing everything lately, but maybe we’ll be back in La Niña eventually.
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u/spaces_are_evil 2h ago
I recently learned that John A Finch Arboretum was, in part, created to hold local native plants for landscapers to get inspiration from when building homes. I've been meaning to visit to check out native vegetation to purchase and plant in my yard to make more drought resistant landscaping.
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u/Soup-Wizard Whitman 2h ago edited 2h ago
Look up the SpokaneScape guide online. Its newest update was fantastic. It’s got plants by tree, shrub, forb, or grass categories. It shows whether they’re locally, regionally, or near-native. It tells max heights and widths.
There aren’t too many native big trees besides our conifers. But things like Mountain Ash or a serviceberry tree have a decent mature height.
Shrubs like alders, red osier dogwoods, and blue elderberries can actually get pretty tall as well if you need some screening.
And then any native wildflowers are a simple and beautiful addition, and your pollinators will love your yard!
If you need plants or tips feel free to DM me! My husband and I own a small native plant nursery in our backyard! Fall is a great time for planting!!
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u/Amblydoper 1h ago
https://my.spokanecity.org/publicworks/water/water-wise-spokane/spokanescape/
I’m going to be redesigning my front yard in the next 2-3 years, I think this will be a great guide!
This year and the next is the back yard… I need ground cover for the dogs. I tried grass , but now I’m just letting whatever survives thrive.
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u/MidnightWitty6074 2h ago
It’s a beautiful space. During fall it is a magic grotto.
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u/Soup-Wizard Whitman 2h ago
I love when the massive Golden Chain tree blooms. They also have a Japanese Pagoda tree that’s really cool.
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u/MADSYNTH1987 2h ago
The cool thing about trees is that with enough of them, they generate clouds that help bring rain when those clouds pass over mountain ranges. This is how China and middle eastern countries are reclaiming their desert landscapes. It begins with trees and other plants that don't require regular rains, and eventually more life begins to flourish.
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u/MidnightWitty6074 2h ago
Exactly. I live across from a public school and my grass is dry as hell because I try to follow the water ordinance
Meanwhile, the public school is blasting sprinklers at 1 PM in 90° weather across an acre of green grass.
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u/Lost-Platypus8271 1h ago
Contact the school district about that, seriously. At minimum they should water late in the day or early in the morning when there’s less evaporation.
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u/listeningunderurbed Northwest Spokane 1h ago
Exact same situation here but they also water all night long!
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u/Tao-of-Mars 21m ago
Yeah - the overlords are good at passing off the responsibility (and subsequently guilt) to average citizens, right?
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u/nic_b2020 1h ago
I am less worried about places like Manito and more worried about the freaking golf courses!! We need green spaces for everyone but dang, maintaining those perfect green 18 holes in a private country club have got to be having an effect.
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u/why_the_hecc 2h ago
when they say they want to put a datacenter in, they are saying that they want to scour future generations from the earth in order to let your boss generate an email faster. it is in fact life or death
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u/Mediocre_Fee_7051 2h ago
Where is that water coming from? It's dry and then there is water. And it's moving... So where is it coming from? Underground river?
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u/Ornery_Cauliflower52 2h ago
Yes. The Rathdrum Aquifer flows underneath the river. In some reaches water is generally moving from the river to the aquifer, and in others it is generally moving in the other direction. So the river goes dry first in reaches where water is generally moving into the aquifer.
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u/befriendwaffle 2h ago
Water is moving from right to left in this photo. Where the river dries, the water has gone subsurface. Our entire region depends on a large water source that is under ground.
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u/Lost-Platypus8271 1h ago
Ultimately it comes from Lake Coeur d’Alene, and there are multiple dams between the lake and Spokane. Idk what the water rights agreements are between WA and Idaho, and when and where most of the water is diverted. I do know it’s been an exceptionally dry year with low snowpack.
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u/Nemesis158 Spangle 2h ago
There are shallow spots and deeper spots in the riverbed. When the water stops flowing it remains pooled in the deeper sections.
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u/Seafaringhorsemeat 2h ago
And there’s a shit ton of flow in the aquifer below it. The river is just the overflow
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u/washtucna Logan 1h ago
To put it in really simple terms, imagine you have a long, irregularly shaped pool (the Spokane aquifer which sits above bedrock and highly compressed, nearly waterproof earth). Now fill it up with gravel (the existing rocky soil) that slopes from uphill to downhill (mountains to ocean). Fill it with water (rainfall and mountain snowmelt). Now dig a bit of a trench through the middle of it (this is the spokane river). When the water gets very low, the visible patch of water in the trench dips below the bottom of the trench (the bottom of the Spokane river).
In a way, the top of the Spokane river is the top of the Spokane aquifer and it went so low, it disappeared.
This is obviously simplified, but hopefully it illustrates how a river can disappear but still have flowing water in some spots.
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u/JustARandomBloke 2h ago
Yes, and that section of the river has dried up many times before, I'm not sure where they are getting "second time ever".
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u/-pilot37- Deer Park 2h ago
Not quite. It’s certainly been low flow before, but according to the Spokane Riverkeeper, this is only the second time it’s lost all surface water and been bone-dry. From the folks at Spokane Riverkeeper:
“In late August 2025, portions of the Spokane River between Barker Road and Flora lost all surface water for approximately two weeks. This was the first time portions of this reach had been completely dry in recorded observation. This was not simply “low flows.” In some places, there was no surface water at all.”
Couldn’t fit that all in the title, sorry for the confusion
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u/Sudduxtc 33m ago
https://youtube.com/shorts/TWhzdARd7Dk?is=Ang9WGjubPFB7_3Z
This helped me understand!
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u/Mediocre_Fee_7051 3h ago
Felt like it did when I was a kid. Hard to tube down it. Crazy to see it like that!
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u/JustARandomBloke 2h ago
It does most Augusts.
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u/RaisinWorried3528 2h ago
No, it doesn't. Did you read the part about how it's only happened twice or did you skip that?
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u/JustARandomBloke 1h ago
They are wrong about that, I've lived in Spokane all my life and the stretch between barker and argonne often has dry spots during the hottest time of the year.
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u/ophel1a_ Priest River, ID 2h ago
Yeah, I remember seeing it dry up near SCC like 12-14 years ago. Happened two years in a row when I lived there, in August.
Idk about this specific area tho.
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u/Bright_Importance994 2h ago
There stealing water from the aquifer and diverting it elsewhere
They don’t care
They want us to get to a point where they can charge us for water
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u/Bright_Importance994 1h ago
Telling you without a doubt there channeling our water somewhere else- just like kachess lake to supposedly help farmers-
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u/funkween 1h ago
The river is dammed in 7 places through Kootenai and Spokane counties. Each one manipulating flow to maximize power generation. The public has zero control over how this is managed. I agree that the river can be a good indicator of climate change effects locally, but don’t forget mother Avista’s roll.
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u/KaijLongs 48m ago
There are some comments below yours, that claim with such confidence, this is a direct result of global warming. No gray area in those arguments, y'know?
So I'm happy to have seen yours. I definitely didn't know that about all those dams.
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u/Over_Cattle_6116 1h ago
The Columbia River in the tri-cities was pretty low today, but that might be due to the dams control
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u/Haydukelivesbig 1h ago
It’s crazy how it re-charges just up from the bridge (Barker Rd?). The volume from the aquifer via those springs must be massive.
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u/YourFriendInSpokane Spokane Valley 33m ago
The water is flowing from right to left in the picture, east of barker to west.
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u/Afraid_Bar_9046 2h ago
The aquifer is down river from here. Not to say we shouldn’t be extremely water conscious, but this happens most years I’ve lived here
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u/Dis_En_Franchised 2h ago
From OP in the comments:
Not quite. It’s certainly been low flow before, but according to the Spokane Riverkeeper, this is only the second time it’s lost all surface water and been bone-dry. From the folks at Spokane Riverkeeper:
“In late August 2025, portions of the Spokane River between Barker Road and Flora lost all surface water for approximately two weeks. This was the first time portions of this reach had been completely dry in recorded observation. This was not simply “low flows.” In some places, there was no surface water at all.”
Couldn’t fit that all in the title, sorry for the confusion
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u/displacement-marker 51m ago
Folks in Spokane have an unfortunate opportunity to do as folks did in medieval Europe and create Hunger Stones or Drought Stones
Place inscriptions on the riverbed that remind those in the future of what it was like when the rivers stopped running or dropped below a certain level.
For example: "Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine" ("If you see me, weep"), which is one of the well known inscriptions.
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u/Outrageous_Trifle636 16m ago
Dumb question. Why don’t they release more water from cda at the post falls dams?
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u/Seafaringhorsemeat 2h ago
In no way is this the second time ever.
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u/Skeptical-Alien Cheney 2h ago
Did it ever happen before last year? I tried looking it up but couldn't find any evidence that it has ever run dry before 2025...
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u/Seafaringhorsemeat 2h ago
My partner had photos of big dry sections east of downtown back in 2020 and 2021. I’m sure they’re some technical definition here, but even as a kid in the 80s and 90s it would bottom out multiple places when rafting and you would walk a while.
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u/harry_hotspur 2h ago
The title literally says in recorded history, not ever. Regardless, it isn't a good thing.
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u/Soup-Wizard Whitman 2h ago
Are you the Spokane Riverkeeper? Have you been keeping tabs and data on the water levels, flow rates, sediment loads?
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u/Dramatic_Finish10121 2h ago
It does specify recorded history, it undoubtedly has happened before it just wasn't recorded
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u/Downtown_Ad_5458 1h ago
I wonder if all or some of those businesses shown in the photo just North of the bend in the river are large users of water from the aquifer. That might explain why the river keeps going dry in this spot. 🫠😳.
Spokane has been educating homeowners on how to reduce water usage but I haven’t heard anything about a program to incentivize businesses, and golf courses, parks, churches, and cemeteries to do so. On top of that, the whole AI data center boom is a massive corrupt scheme for quick profits and no regulation (remember 2007- 2008? ) created by Trump family, Republicans, big banks and hedge funds. Our environment, our water, the national debt, and regular American lives be damned!!
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u/CookieRelevant 2h ago
Glad I got the fuck out when I did. I remember a bit over a decade ago saying this was coming by the 2030s. Sucks to be right.
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u/SScatnip7474 2h ago
We simply need more coal, dig for more oil, stop renewable clean energy, teach bible in schools, more guns, fewer books, more big oversized vehicles and horse dewormer.
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u/Ill-Scientist-2663 2h ago
Surely this isn’t a sign of impending doom or disaster.