Climatology of the coming extremely large El Niño
The late Chris Farley, famed climatologist, on the power and importance of El Niño: Never gets old.
Archive of posts filed under the climate variability category.
A promising seasonal forecast for the Colorado River Basin
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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El Niño and New Mexico’s Rio Grande
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 …
New Mexico creeping further out of drought
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 El Niño mean for the Colorado River Basin?
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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Thus far, an excellent New Mexico monsoon
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:
Risks of 2016 Colorado River shortage declaration pretty much gone, risks of 2017 also shrinking
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 …
An Albuquerque rainstorm for the record books
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:
Lake Powell runoff update
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 …
Albuquerque’s monsoon officially underway
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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