Breaking out of my old “water policy writer” habits is hard. The bridges of Albuquerque are helping. Counting and Measuring Prepping for an appearance on this Friday’s New Mexico In Focus on NMPBS, I’ve spent a bunch of time the last few days digging through agricultural water use data. (Spoiler alert: Ag water use has …
Continue reading ‘Ribbons of Green: what we mean by “water policy”’ »
July is, in general, Albuquerque’s hottest month. This year’s was the hottest July we ever had. All kind of weather records…. Average overnight low of 72.3F was the warmest for that measure in a dataset going back to 1892. Total measured precipitation at the airport, our official measurement station, was just a trace – tied …
Continue reading ‘In Albuquerque, a record for July unpleasantness’ »
By one measure of overall heat, yesterday (July 25, 2023) was the hottest day ever recorded in Albuquerque. This is a tricky one, the sort of extreme I used to love back in my newspaper days when I needed a hook to slip stories like this past the filter of my editors. The daytime high …
Continue reading ‘Yesterday (July 25, 2023) was the hottest day in Albuquerque history’ »
The fancy new Barelas Bridge, built in 1910 across the Rio Grande on what was then the southern edge of Albuquerque, was a big deal. The Albuquerque Museum photo archive (some on line here, more that I’ve begun studying at the museum for possible use in the new book) has a bunch of pictures of …
My mental map as I ride my bike across Albuquerque’s Rio Grande Valley floor has grown increasingly complex in the last six months as we’ve added layer upon layer of historic maps to the research for our forthcoming book Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City. Yesterday morning, …
I was delighted when veteran journalist Peter Rice started publishing the Downtown Albuquerque News, an emailed daily M-F news source for downtown Albuquerque. I also figured it was nothing more than a happy experiment, and probably wouldn’t make it. I am remain delighted with DAN as a reader, and am also delighted to have been …
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Sunup bike ride to consult with The Birds. They advised us, if we can, to stay indoors to beat the heat, said they’d keep an eye on things for us.
When last we visited, Lake Mead sat at elevation 1,054.28 feet above sea level. It’s now at 1,058.34, which is up ~13 feet from when I took the above photo last December. I hope they moved those chairs. The good news is the current forecast calling for the combined storage of Lake Mead and Lake …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: mid-July Colorado River status report’ »
A guest post by Friend of Inkstain Jason Robison, the Carl M. Williams Professor of Law & Social Responsibility at the University of Wyoming College of Law and chair of the Colorado River Research Group By Jason Robison A few weeks ago, on June 22, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) handed down its much-awaited decision …
Continue reading ‘Arizona v. Navajo Nation: What SCOTUS Didn’t Do Along the Colorado River’ »
The sandbars are starting to emerge from the Rio Grande as river managers drop the flow through Albuquerque to match inflow from upstream. One of the things we’re watching as the river recedes is the vegetation on the sandbars. Did it survive the high flows? Over time, we’re seeing a trajectory from sandbar to vegetated …
Continue reading ‘Rio Grande still high through Albuquerque, but less so’ »