Albuquerque’s Rio Grande is currently not much of a river.

River No More: the Rio Grande as seen from Albuquerque’s west bluff neighborhood, Sept. 8, 2013, by John Fleck

Lissa and I made the rounds this afternoon of a few Rio Grande viewpoints. This is from Albuquerque’s West Bluff neighborhood, on the west side of the river north of downtown. The bridge in the distance is Montaño.

With an abysmal snowpack, the river was dropping fast in June, but a wet July rescued flows temporarily. As August dried out, though, the river started dropping again. The gauge at Central Ave., the most important measure for regulatory purposes, is down this weekend, but the Paseo del Norte gauge, at 137 cfs, is the lowest it’s been all year. The Central gauge has typically been 50 to 100 cfs below the Paseo gauge all year (data here), so I’d only be guessing based on past performance that the Central flow well south of 100 cfs. Eyeballing it from around Central, it sure looked lower than in early July, when it briefly reached the mid-70s.

Maybe it’ll rain this week.