Mud!
A week of rain (I exaggerate, six days) has lifted our spirits after one of the driest starts to a calendar year on record in Albuquerque. The river was muddy yesterday on the family Wednesday lunch outing, and the cottonwoods looked so happy. The wild roses were blooming, we stuck our noses in them to smell.
And yet….
Lowest on this date since 1996.
- Percentile ranking of yesterday’s flow: 7 (record goes back to 1965)
- Lowest flow on this date in history since 1996.
Lowest since 1996. Well, that paints a sobering picture.
Kinda what we are hearing up this way. This may temporarily put some water in the home rain barrels, but it is not a substitute for a winter of snowpack. We are not out of trouble.
Seeing the flow graph for the Rio Grande makes we wonder what the impact of Trans-basin diversions are on the water flow outside of the CO river basin. Is there a graph for that?
The Platte, Republican, Arkansas and Rio Grande all receive some water from the CO river, often to settle lawsuits, and I wonder what that outflow looks like?