The Last Super El Niño Almost Broke Glen Canyon Dam

In 1983, the last super El Niño filled Lake Powell to the highest level in its history, and the spillways of Glen Canyon Dam began tearing themselves apart. Engineers ended up holding back America's second-largest reservoir with plywood. Now Lake Powell is at a record low, and the strongest El Niño in decades is building in the Pacific. Subscribe for more deep Earth stories:    / @deepearthofficial   Chapters 0:00 The lake at a record low 1:12 A lake that should never spill 2:43 The winter of the super El Niño 4:19 The rumbling 6:18 The plywood 7:26 Flying blind 10:16 The opposite crisis 11:37 Ready for a flood? Sources Burgi, Moyes & Gamble, "Operation of Glen Canyon Dam Spillways – Summer 1983" (ASCE 1984, USBR PAP-714): https://www.usbr.gov/tsc/techreferenc... ASDSO Lessons Learned, Glen Canyon Dam 1983: https://damfailures.org/case-study/gl... U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Hoover Dam spillways history: https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/his... NOAA Climate Prediction Center, ENSO diagnostic discussion (Sept 2026) Lake Powell elevation: USBR Hydromet via lakepowellwaterlevel.com Colorado Basin River Forecast Center on El Niño and the Upper Colorado Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert; James Lawrence Powell, Dead Pool Image and footage credits Aerial imagery: Google Earth (Google Earth Studio) 1983 spillway, flashboard and tunnel photos: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (public domain) Hoover Dam and Arizona Spillway, 1983: Bureau of Reclamation (public domain) Lake Powell 2016 bathtub ring: Pierre Andre, CC BY-SA 4.0 Tree rings of a 1,500-year-old tree: Thomas Quine, CC BY 2.0 Stock footage via Pexels: Alex Moliski, Ali Soheil, Anatolii Grytsenko, ArtHouse Studio, Beata L., David Pickup, EJ Merl, K, Philipp Kappler, SALAR, Sergey Guk, Tom Fisk, Vi Ulloa, 华 仔 Stock footage via Pixabay: DancingSky, Engin_Akyurt, Oleh_1977, doktorkleinmusic Sound effects (SoundBible, Attribution 3.0): "Camera Shutter Click", "Drilling", "Waterfall", "Wooden Thump" by Mike Koenig; "Blop", "Wind" by Mark DiAngelo; "Tick" by DeepFrozenApps; "Large Waterfall" by Daniel Simion Music: generated with Meta MusicGen