With the current snowpack in the Colorado Basin watersheds above Lake Powell at 93 percent of average (source: CBRFC), we’re entering the critical time for the 2015-16 water year on the Colorado River. Today’s forecast from the federal government’s Climate Prediction Center has the odds tipped toward a wet later winter and spring, but not …
Continue reading ‘Odds favor wet late winter, spring across Colorado River Basin’ »
The snowpack this morning in the Colorado River Basin above Lake Powell (source: CBRFC) measures at 90 percent of average for this date, which is a bit nerve wracking with the basin’s reservoirs only half full (source: USBR pdf). The latest forecast runs from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the folks who run the …
Continue reading ‘Colorado Basin snowpack lagging, forecast for a wet spring’ »
We got 12.86 inches of precipitation in 2015 (32.66 cm) at the Heineman-Fleck house in Albuquerque. Average going back to 2000 is 9.72, which qualifies by the arbitrary 10 inch mark as a desert.
When I was in newspaper journalism, I always viewed the holiday season as a target of opportunity. Papers were relatively fat, propped up by holiday ad content, and news was thin, so editors were desperate for copy. As the end of the year approached, I’d queue up story ideas, knowing that it was a chance …
It snowed overnight in Albuquerque.
For the first time since Nov. 30, 2010, New Mexico has been categorized as entirely free of “drought” in this morning’s federal Drought Monitor. 26 percent of the state remains “abnormally dry”, but none of the state is in any of the monitor’s formally designated drought categories. This does not mean that we are free …
Robert Osborne and Jonathan Overpeck published interesting pieces in the last couple of days reinforcing an important point about our perceptions and understanding of recurrence intervals in big weather and climate events. Osborne is in the southeastern U.S. and is writing about flooding (short term) while Overpeck is in the southwest and is writing about drought (much …
I’m happy to note that my book The Tree Rings’ Tale: Understanding Our Changing Climate (Barbara Guth Worlds of Wonder Science Series for Young Readers) was a November pick of the month by librarians at the Clovis-Carver Library in Clovis, New Mexico. Not too early to think about a Christmas gift for that bright young …
Continue reading ‘Librarian love for “The Tree Rings’ Tale”’ »
Laura Paskus takes us this morning to the mountains of northern New Mexico, where the snow is melting earlier than it used to, and less of the ensuing runoff is making it into our Rio Grande: [A]s bleak as southwestern springtime stream flow forecasts have been in recent years, scientists at the University of New …
Continue reading ‘Climate change, the Rio Grande forecast problem, and the death of stationarity’ »
The late Chris Farley, famed climatologist, on the power and importance of El Niño: Never gets old.