The federal Climate Prediction Center’s seasonal forecast, out this morning, looks promising for the Colorado River Basin: These forecast maps can be visually deceptive. The greens mean a shift of odds toward wetter weather, not a forecast that we should expect wetter weather. Dice, loaded slightly in our favor. You can see all the precip …
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Does the looming El Niño mean we can expect a big year on the Rio Grande? Not necessarily. The scatter in the data is huge, but hidden in the data is a bit of a nudge in the direction of wet: That’s native flow at Otowi, the key Rio Grande measurement point north of Albuquerque. There’s …
For the first time since January 2011, none of New Mexico is classified as being in “severe drought” in this week’s Drought Monitor:
What does the growing El Niño oceanic pattern mean for the Colorado River Basin? Best to just shrug, and say the statistics are too small to say much of anything conclusive. In the nine El Niño years since the 1960s, three have been wet, three have been in the middle, and three have been dry. Here’s a …
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Those unfamiliar with the volcanoes on Albuquerque’s west side will have to take me at my word when I assert that they are not normally this green:
The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest 24-month study, out this afternoon (pdf), shows continued improvement on the Colorado River system’s big reservoirs as a result of the hella rainy spring and summer, and therefore a continued reduction in the risk of a Lower Basin shortage declaration. The number to watch is a Lake Mead elevation of …
That thunderstorm that woke most of us up early this morning (lightning flashes through our skylight at 1:30 a.m.) was one for the record books. At the National Weather Service’s airport gauge (the “official” Albuquerque gauge), 2.24 inches (5.7 cm). According to Brian Guyer at the Weather Service, that’s the single highest 24-hour total in history:
On May 1, the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center projected 3 million acre feet of runoff into Lake Powell from Aril 1 through the end of July. This was bad. Then it started raining. On June 1, the forecast was increased to 5 million acre feet. As of late last week, the estimate actual inflow …
By the powers invested in my by no one in particular, I hereby declare Albuquerque’s 2015 Monsoon Season underway. The weather radar is showing blobs of color in the high country to the southwest, there are high clouds popping up above the mountains to the east of the city, but the real clue was how …
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The June mid-month forecast from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center is up a million acre feet from June 1. Total April-July inflow into Lake Powell is now projected to be 6 million acre feet, up from 5 million acre feet forecast on June 1. That’s still below average, just 84 percent of the mean. …
Continue reading ‘Halfway through June, another million acre feet on the Colorado River’ »