Deepening and widening of stream channels in the Southwest is a phenomenon that has taken place within the memory of men now living. It began at different dates from 1860 on and has progressed at different rates on several streams, as summarized in a recent paper.²? The flood plains of numerous minor streams are yet …
NEAR THE CONFLUENCE OF THE RIO PUERCO AND THE RIO GRANDE – The broad delta where the Rio Puerco meets the Rio Grande in central New Mexico has never been a great place to live, though people try. To the east, across the river, the Ancestral Puebloan Piro built the village Spanish colonizers named “Sevilleta” …
Alert Inkstain reader Rolf asked in the comments of last weekend’s post for a version of the above graph – number of days of low flow at the Central Avenue Bridge – with a threshold above zero. I usually set the threshold at 25, because our experience in the last two drying episodes – 2022 …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s Dry Middle Rio Grande: More Data Visualizations’ »
I spent some time this morning crunching numbers, trying to make numerical sense of how bad this year is on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande. We keep saying it’s only the second time the Rio Grande has dried through Albuquerque since the 1980s, but that felt insufficient. Some data visualization experiments: By this measure – …
Continue reading ‘Driest on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande since when? 1972? 1964?’ »
Formed in a series of volcanic eruptions between 1 and 2 million years ago, the Jemez Mountains dominate the cultural and environmental history of central New Mexico. For more than four decades, forest ecologist Craig Allen has studied them, engaging in what has come to be known as “place-based ecology,” with deep roots in what …
Continue reading ‘Craig Allen joins us on the Utton Center’s Water Matters! podcast’ »
If you have ever been to modern San Marcial, New Mexico – or what is left of it – the notion of an 86-pound catfish requires some explanation. The spot where D.C. George hooked his record catfish is today ragged scrubland. But for a brief, shining, extremely odd period of time in the 1940s and …
Continue reading ‘The 86-pound catfish of Lake San Marcial’ »
From USBR Albuquerque office chief Jennifer Faler’s report to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board yesterday (Monday, July 14, 2025). The USBR Albuquerque office has, on paper, a full staffing contingent of 200 FTEs. That’s on paper. Operationally, the actual levels in the past generally hovered around 175. Current staffing level sits at 117 …
The “official” call: the Rio Grande went dry in the Albuquerque reach, just upstream of the city’s wastewater treatment plant (click here for the map), on Sunday evening (July 13, 2025), for only the second time in the 21st century. “Dry” in this case has a formal definition. The thinning ribbons of water you see …
Continue reading ‘The Rio Grande has gone dry in Albuquerque’ »
The Rio Grande gage at Albuquerque’s Central Avenue Bridge is reading 20.5 cubic feet per second this afternoon (Sunday, July 13). The last time we saw river drying in the Albuquerque reach, back in 2022, 25 cfs at Central wasn’t enough to make it to the wastewater treatment plant outfall, as flows dwindled in the …
Like a blog post, but with yakking! Rin Tara and I on the coming of Albuquerque’s summer rains.