Boom!
The graph uses day-long averages. The actual peak yesterday was over 3,000 cfs at the Central Avenue Bridge. Here’s what it looked like around noon:
Archive of posts filed under the Albuquerque category.
“sad havoc” – what happens when you build a city in a flood plain
This remarkable image by Roberto Rosales, my former Albuquerque Journal colleague now taking pictures for City Desk ABQ, captures a sharp reality of Albuquerque. We built our city in a flood plain, and in particular downtown beginning in the 1880s in a low area that was part Rio Grande flood path, and part swamp. That …
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Capability, Dignity, and Albuquerque’s San Mateo Inn
My city councilor, Tammy Fiebelkorn, gets it. Here’s what she said about the city of Albuquerque’s purchase of an old motel in our neighborhood to use as transitional housing for young people (18 – 25) on the edge of homelessness: The San Mateo Inn is across the street from a bus stop, a short drive …
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Blooming Hedgehog
Lissa has been nurturing this hedgehog cactus since we brought it back from Tucson a couple of years ago, wondering if it would survive our Albuquerque winters. This morning, it started putting on a show.
Always check the gate. It might be unlocked and lead somewhere interesting!
In our years of urban exploring of Albuquerque on our bicycles, my collaborator and I have learned a number of guiding principles that I realized might be worth sharing. The realization came at this gate, which of course I checked to see if it was locked. It wasn’t, which led to the discovery of a …
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Watching the water spread across the Middle Rio Grande Valley Floor
I feel this morning a bit like a kid watching the NORAD map of Santa on his global travels, as I hit “reload” on the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s new gaging data page. The district opened the diversion gates early this morning at Cochiti Dam, at the head of what we call New Mexico’s …
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Somos Atrisco: Anchoring greater Albuquerque’s heritage
Work is moving forward on a new park sort of thing to mark an important piece of Albuquerque’s historical geography: the old Atrisco ditch heading. Carolyn Carlson reports in the new City Desk ABQ (yay non-profit journalism!) that the Bernalillo County Commission adopted the “Atrisco Acequia Madre Master Plan” at its Jan. 9 meeting. It’ll …
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The White Trains
Out on my bike exploring this morning, I climbed a hill to find these old abandoned railroad tracks built for what they called the “White Trains,” which carried nuclear weapons to and from Kirtland Air Force Base outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. It wasn’t a surprise. I knew roughly where they were, having stumbled on a …
Watching Albuquerque’s Rio Grande go dry
There’s so much going on in this picture. The buildings on the horizon, downtown Albuquerque, are a couple of miles away – foreshortened by the camera’s zoom. It’s a modest downtown, which grew up in that spot 140 years ago because the real estate entrepreneurs collaborating with the newly arrived Athchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe …
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On Bridges
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 …