Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples is setting up a run for lieutenant governor. Making the rounds, he ended up this week in the dry parts of the state, where folks naturally asked him about water: “When I talk to companies about them expanding in Texas or moving to Texas,” he said, “inevitably two questions come …
Continue reading ‘In Texas, water policy is a front burner political issue’ »
Regular readers will know of my obsession with pushing beyond the “OMG we’re running out of water!” story line to look in detail at who, specifically, gets shorted when supplies run low and what adaptive responses they have available. In New Mexico, water managers are using the occasion of our current drought to helpfully prepare …
Continue reading ‘Possible San Juan-Chama water shortages’ »
I sat for a really long time with my Dad Sunday afternoon. His labored breathing was like a metronome, a weird combination of great labor and steady rhythm. His eyes were vacantly half open, and it’s reasonable to assume (I did at the time) that he had no idea I was there. It was lunchtime, …
Hannah Holm of Colorado Mesa University had a good piece earlier this month in the Grand Junction Free Press outlining the future risks facing Colorado River water users and managers: A heavy train is moving at 5 miles per hour toward… a cliff? A collision? And how far away might this unknown calamity be? These …
Continue reading ‘The shortcomings of the Colorado train wreck metaphor’ »
I love the way “atmospheric river” has now entered the public weather discussion lexicon: Enjoy the dry, cool days that mark the start of this week in the Sacramento area. Then get ready for an “atmospheric river” late in the week that will bring perhaps 3 inches of rain to the Valley, the National Weather …
Continue reading ‘atmospheric river headed California way’ »
Another episode in my effort to explore the meaning of “drought” by way of example. Up on Albuquerque’s north side is a spot the birders call the “Tramway wetland”*. It’s the spot where the main flood control channel for much of Albuquerque slows before entering the Rio Grande. The local flood control authority has designed …
Continue reading ‘More on the definition of “drought”: a dry spot’ »
Once, while a young teen, I spotted a house on fire while dad was driving me home from my bassoon lesson. I alerted the residents, who were unaware that their roof had caught fire. It was a relatively modest fire, and firefighters were able to quickly extinguish it without major damage to the house or …
This is August 2012 along the Duranes ditch in Albuquerque’s north valley. The ditch on the left is relatively new. The spur to the right, obscured by the sunflowers, has been in continuous use for more than 300 years. The previous 24 months for this climate division had been the second driest such stretch on …
Continue reading ‘Where does this fit into our definition of “drought”?’ »
My sister, Lisa, found a box of Dad’s old postcards over the weekend, including a number he had sent during a trip out west in 1946. He’d just gotten out of the Army, a Pennsylvania kid wandering the landscape that would later animate his art and become our home. There was this, to his parents …
Continue reading ‘Boulder Dam, circa 1946: “a lot of propoganda for Daddy to read”’ »
Richard Seager’s widely cited 2007 paper projecting “an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America” did not use the Palmer Drought Severity Index. His work relies on a calculation of precipitation minus evaporation (P – E) to determine the extent and trend of drying under a changing climate. In response to …
Continue reading ‘measuring drought – the right tool for the job’ »