Jack Schmidt on New Mexico water managers’ pushing 1,700 cfs down the Rio Grande in the middle of December to tidy up our annual Rio Grande Compact accounting: Thanks for the reminder of the tragedy of moving water at the wrong time of year when that water provides no ecological benefit. If that water were …
The Sunday bike ride included a brief detour to check out the river. The Rio Grande was flowing at 1,700 cfs, the highest sustained flows of the year, as water managers move water downstream to meet their annual Rio Grande Compact accounting goals. The “Happy Holidays” graffiti is, of course, there year ‘round. I love …
Continue reading ‘Happy Holidays From a Flowing Rio Grande’ »
It’s important to understand that the Rio Grande is not a natural system. It’s an engineered system. It’s managed on a daily basis by a consortium of agencies at all different levels of government plus municipal water users and irrigation districts. So partly, (drying is) a product of decisions. It is also clearly a product …
Total flow to date on the Rio Grande at Otowi is the lowest since 1964. Otowi is the place where the river leaves the upper valleys and enters the canyons that lie at the head of the valley of Albuquerque, what we in New Mexico call the “Middle Rio Grande.” The graph shows total …
Continue reading ‘The driest year on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande since 1964’ »
Enrique Romero joins Rin and I on Water Matters to discuss acequias and querencia. (This podcast thing is a blast!)
Autumnal equinox news briefs: I was on the phone in the front room of our house yesterday evening, facing east, as the setting sun dropped beneath the clouds after a short burst of rain. Rainbow. And the conversation, with the cousin of an old friend who died earlier this year, was rich. The Rio Grande …
Continue reading ‘A rainbow, a river, and the first cranes of fall’ »
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’ »