Albuquerque’s bosque has been suffering a rapid dieback, as shallow aquifers drop away from the roots of the community’s beloved cottonwood gallery forest. This is uncharted territory for our modern bosque, which grew into its present state after Bureau of Reclamation channeling in the 1950s created the modern river corridor, and flood control and water …
Continue reading ‘Rapid dieback in Albuquerque’s Rio Grande bosque’ »
While pulling together some data today for our latest Water Matters podcast, I was surprised by the dry streak we’ve been in. The last above average monsoon here was 2018. (Episode posts tomorrow – 6/23 – I’ll try to remember to update the post with a link. Update: the episode) Also, I’ve been trying to …
Continue reading ‘Recent Albuquerque monsoon history: dry’ »
I made a brief stop at a dry Rio Grande main channel this morning, around the Central Avenue Bridge, before I pointed the Space Ghost southwest into the South Valley. The Arenal Canal, which hugs the sand hills on the valley’s western edge, was flowing, but just 25 cubic feet per second. 100 cfs is …
Going through our chaotic collection of old maps at the H-F house, I found a treasure: 2003 BLM map of Albuquerque and vicinity that I’d used to mark a bunch of bike rides with highlighter. Pre-GPS era. I’ve been at this for a long time. My favorite social media response to the announcement of our …
Continue reading ‘Bob and I got our pictures in the paper!’ »
Federal water managers yesterday (May 18, 2026) began pushing a pulse of water through New Mexico’s rapidly drying Middle Rio Grande to try to encourage the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow to spawn. From a note sent ’round to the Bureau’s water management list yesterday by Carolyn Donnelly, water operations supervisor for the bureau’s Albuquerque …
Continue reading ‘2026-05-19: Federal managers increase release for the silvery minnow’ »
Words fall short as we watch the West’s snowpack disappear under the glare of a heat wave so off-the-charts, so freakish, that I had to resort to some pretty extreme math to try to understand how freakishly off-the-charts this is. We’ve got more than a century of weather records in Albuquerque, with really good ones …
Continue reading ‘A Freakish Heat Wave – A Statistical Wonder’ »