The camera on my new phone is dope. I love bridge abutment graffiti, but it’s so hard to shoot because of the deep shadows and bright light. I love the geometry of the bridge structures, the way it interacts with the writing, the lines and brights and shadows, the three conceptual layers – river, and …
Daniel Swain on the next wave of Four Corners storms expected this weekend (Halloween 2026): The fact that this pair of back-to-back extreme-to-record shattering rain events across the interior Southwest have occurred during the autumn during (one of the) strongest El Niño events on record is not a coincidence! Such events are known to be …
The Rio Puerco (the eastern one, there’s two, this is the one that flows into the Rio Grande south of Belen, New Mexico) took its turn yesterday, with historic flows from the tropical storm remnants that have been drenching the Four Corners states. I have no idea who Jon Finley is, but we’re forever in …
Green acreage in non-Pueblo MRGCD irrigable parcels, summer 2026 2026 provided a remarkable convergence of a natural experiment on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande (a river and therefore irrigation system with little or no water) and the rapid advancement of what I’ve come to think of as “Curiosity Exploder Tools” (CETs, also more commonly known …
Continue reading ‘When people have less water, they seem to use less water’ »
Whiplash.
I took advantage of the break between Storm 2 and Storm 3 to wander the South Valley this morning. It was a great ride – lots of ditch banks, some weird urbanity (the Walmart parking lot where Frank Hubbell’s farm used to be, read our book to learn about the failed tobacco farming empire of …
My Utton Center posse is throwing a book launch party Friday (Sept. 25, 2026, 12:30 p.m.) at the Guild in Nob Hill. When we were conjuring up a title over the summer, we came up with “A conversation about the past, present, and future of Albuquerque’s Rio Grande,” which seemed to offer me lots of …
Updating my “drought and climate change” lecture each fall is a useful exercise – this year more useful than most. Much like the year itself, my slide deck is setting all time records for new data visualizations needed to make sense of the remarkable 2026. Update Great questions from the comments. (I love my commenters.) …
Continue reading ‘Making sense of the crazy outlier year of 2026’ »