A section of the Central Arizona Project, a series of aqueducts and tunnels designed to bring water from the Colorado River to Arizona, runs through a subdivision in Gilbert, Arizona. | Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg/Getty Images

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Officials were already sounding the alarm bells in early March across the Western United States after a winter with historically low snowpacks, which supplies water for communities as it slowly melts throughout the spring and summer.

Then came the heat wave.

As I reported last week , a high-pressure system brought early-season heat to the region, breaking temperature records in many states with help from climate change .…