Lake Mead water levels are at their lowest since the filling of the reservoir for the first time in 1937, according to NASA, with the lake at 27% capacity on July 18. A metal barrel containing the remains of a person killed about four decades ago was found on Sunday on the shore of Nevada's Lake Mead, a discovery that the Las Vegas Metropolitan . The receding waters of Lake Mead have exposed three bodies and a number of sunken boats amid a megadrought in the Western US. Lake Mead sits at roughly an elevation of 1,046 feet. Tim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital. It's the lowest level on record for the. Some of the remains found in Lake Mead may be connected to the Las Vegas mob Federal data shows the 270 square-mile reservoir which straddles the Nevada-Arizona border and provides water to 40 million people at 27% capacity. The shrinking lake has also revealed a World War II era landing craft and volcanic ash from 12 million years ago. They were never, they were never found. "Stuffing a body in a barrel. According to Steve Schafer, a local resident and the owner of environmental services company Earth Resource Group, which is working to uncover the bodies, there will be many more. A National Park Service spokesperson told CNN a possible explanation for some of the remains is that they could be people who drowned in the lake when the water levels were higher in the 1980s. This was the third skeleton to be found in this area of the lake. All Rights Reserved, Lake Mead gives up another one of her dead, Shrinking Lake Mead: Dead bodies, sunken boats and now volcanic ash, How bad is the Western drought? Copyright 2023 WLS-TV. Skeleton in barrel revealed by receding waters of Lake Mead are of a gunshot victim, police say May 3, 2022 But mob hits in Las Vegas typically ended with desert burials, Schumacher said. . And more human remains discovered in the plummeting waters of Lake Mead? Since 2013, Schafer and other volunteers have pulled 10 to 12 bodies from the lake. "I havent got any fish, and everywhere I go, theres bodies," he told the station. Dropping water levels in Lake Mead, above the Hoover Dam, revealed human remains that have probably been hidden for decades.CreditJoe Buglewicz for The New York Times.