Forests to Faucets (and Headgates!)

I spent a couple of days last week out of Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado, touring forest restoration work in the headwaters of the San Juan-Chama Project, which produces critical water supplies for central New Mexico. In others words, water for my neighhbors and me. We’ve learned over and over in the last couple of …

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Breaking Albuquerque’s flash drought: Biggest monsoon storm in a decade

August 8 is more than a little late for Albuquerque’s first solid monsoon rains to break our weirdly hot flash drought, but we’ll take it. Typical monsoon onset here is early July, plus or minus a week-ish. At the risk of overstating because of a lack of precision, Aug. 8 is record late. I was …

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Albuquerque shutting down its river diversions because of low Rio Grande flows, going to groundwater

Area water managers were informed this morning that the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority will shut down its diversion of water from the Rio Grande for use in the municipal drinking water system, switching over to groundwater pumping to meet municipal needs. The reason is low flows in the river. Albuquerque is constrained by …

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Rio Grande through Albuquerque could dry again this year

The Rio Grande, already dry in the San Acacia reach south of Socorro, has begun drying in the Isleta reach south of Albuquerque. And with a record hot dry summer, we could see it dry in Albuquerque again this year, as it did last year for the first time in 40 years. Via Dani Prokop: …

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Ribbons of Green: what we mean by “water policy”

Breaking out of my old “water policy writer” habits is hard. The bridges of Albuquerque are helping. Counting and Measuring Prepping for an appearance on this Friday’s New Mexico In Focus on NMPBS, I’ve spent a bunch of time the last few days digging through agricultural water use data. (Spoiler alert: Ag water use has …

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In Albuquerque, a record for July unpleasantness

July is, in general, Albuquerque’s hottest month. This year’s was the hottest July we ever had. All kind of weather records…. Average overnight low of 72.3F was the warmest for that measure in a dataset going back to 1892. Total measured precipitation at the airport, our official measurement station, was just a trace – tied …

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Yesterday (July 25, 2023) was the hottest day in Albuquerque history

By one measure of overall heat, yesterday (July 25, 2023) was the hottest day ever recorded in Albuquerque. This is a tricky one, the sort of extreme I used to love back in my newspaper days when I needed a hook to slip stories like this past the filter of my editors. The daytime high …

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#GeographyByBike – Riding the Ribbons

My mental map as I ride my bike across Albuquerque’s Rio Grande Valley floor has grown increasingly complex in the last six months as we’ve added layer upon layer of historic maps to the research for our forthcoming book Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City. Yesterday morning, …

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Rio Grande still high through Albuquerque, but less so

The sandbars are starting to emerge from the Rio Grande as river managers drop the flow through Albuquerque to match inflow from upstream. One of the things we’re watching as the river recedes is the vegetation on the sandbars. Did it survive the high flows? Over time, we’re seeing a trajectory from sandbar to vegetated …

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